Good times with my sister. =]

So, today was a very hot day. Very. 107 degrees kind of hot. My sister and I had been talking to our mom about how we need a pool in our backyard, just like any other hot day. A little while later, my sister randomly told me her idea.
So you know what we did?
We went to Big Lots! and bought a $20 kiddie pool!

It didn't take that long to inflate, thanks to our handy-dandy air mattress pumps.

But filling it with water? It took FOREVER.
And by the time we got it filled with the freezing cold water, it was really cloudy and not as warm.
But we got in anyway. =]

It was great. That thing is pretty big for a kiddie pool, actually. We could probably fit five our six people in it! Crazy.

Party in our kiddie pool! =D

Kelsey

School. =[

So last quarter at CBC was going well enough. It took a week or so to get used to having three very different online classes, but I finally got the hang of it. Like most online classes, none of my teachers posted our grades during the quarter. They did it all at the very last minute, so none of us knew how we were doing in the class.

That's where my problem began, I guess.

I have been given a very unfair grade in my government class. I checked my grades (they were finally posted on the site three days after they were supposed to be!), and I had a 0.7 in that class. How did that happen? I turned in everything! There was a problem with the first exam (it wouldn't let me save any of my answers), but I had sent an email to my teacher explaining the problem and with the answers at the bottom. He wrote me back and said that he understood the technical difficulties and would grade my exam based on the answers I sent him.

Then, I had more technical difficulties with my city council post. I posted it on the 8th (it was due on the 12th) at about 4:00 in the afternoon. I refreshed the posts to make sure it was there, and it was. But on the last day of the class, I was going through all my posted assignments to make sure everything was there, but my city council post was gone. I sent my professor an email with the attached file and once again told him about stupid tech difficulties in WebCT, but he never wrote back.

Now, after I emailed him to ask why my grade was so low, he said I didn't turn in a whole bunch of assignments. Trust me, I did turn them in. I have all the files saved on my computer just in case something like this happened. I wrote him back and told him I'd send him the files to prove it (I had to ask what format to send them in). He wrote back and said that he had changed my grade to a 1.0, but since I "didn't post the assignments, he wouldn't change my grade to be any higher." If I didn't turn in an assignment, WHY WOULD I HAVE THE ASSIGNMENTS??? It's all very frustrating. And there's no other way to change my grade.

So now I'm going to have to take the class again. It's going to mess up my whole schedule. Great.

I HATE CBC sometimes. Like now.

Oh, and it's the second day of summer quarter, and I've already taken two tests in my English class. Yay.

Kelsey

Remembering the good ol' days...

So, I got bored today and I decided to go through alllll my pictures from my old computer and the ones I have saved on this one. Of course, I came across many, MANY pictures that brought back good (and bad) memories. I figured that I might as well share them with you guys!

(I apologize now for how many pictures I may be posting, and I apologize for any spontaneous outbursts of laughter ^_^ )

My old youth group on our beach trip. This was our "moody artists on a cliff" picture. =]

Oh gosh. The youth rafting trip. Patty and Sam were conspiring to throw me in the river! Ha. They never did get me!
What REALLY happens on marching band trips! We take illegal pictures at the Auburn Supermall =]
Aww, me and Caitline! We were taking pictures at 2 am in my basement. Ahahaha. Good times, good times... Oh my gosh. This was me a loooooooooong time ago at camp! Go Silver Lake Camp! Yes... This one made it onto the camp CD! King's Theatre! Ahh, yes. This was my first year in the group. Can you find me? (Hint: I'm in the second row!)

Champion! Demon parts are always fun. Seriously. (Oh, look how young I am! That was five or six years ago! Crazy!)

King's Theatre my second year. Doncha love drama kids? =]

Oh look! I'm up front, being the Glamour Girl. And look! It so wasn't 2002. The timestamp LIES.

Ahh! Me and my twin Kelli marching in the fair parade this year! Psh, look at that perfect roll-step!

My family (minus my dad, who, of course, is taking the picture) in Lincoln City a few years ago. =]

FLUTIES! This is what we do at band camp when we're in sectionals... Hahahahaha. I love the wrestling gym =]

Okay, I have to go to practice. I might post later. Who knows?

See ya'll.

Kelsey

Finally!

Ahh. After twelve long weeks of class, I'm done with physical geography!
I know, I know, it was an online class so it shouldn't have been that bad... but it was! My professor made up words, but we still had to define them. And, as I have learned, there are way too many words that mean essentially the same thing. Oh gosh, like anything rock-related... waaaaay too many words!

But, I still have government and sociology to do. Thankfully, those should be a lot easier. Emphasis on the "should be" part. Oh, college...


Okay, change of subject: Dreams. I have weird dream phases that I go through. Between the ages of birth and about 14, I had disturbing dreams. I mean REALLY disturbing dreams. They're scarier than anything you'll ever see. Trust me. Not only that, but they were so real. I could smell, taste, and feel everything. It was not pleasant, and especially not for someone as young as I was.
Yes, I had a few okay dreams during that time. Well, I had maybe ten good dreams during that time. But still, it counts. However, during that time, there was also this dream that I kept having. It was weird, and I'm really not sure if it was a "good" dream or a "bad" dream. It was the same concept every time, but just a little different. I was in a train car that connected to two other cars (obviously). The car behind it was on fire, and it had a phone sitting on a desl. The fire didn't spread, it just sort of sat there. The car in front of it only opened once; it was locked all the other times. Like I said, the dream was a little different every time, but I had it many, many times during that time period.
Then I moved on to my super-insomniac period that lasted for a year. I would stay up for three or four nights in a row, then crash. Stay up, crash. It was not a good cycle.
Then came my dreamless phase that also lasted for a year. Okay, I know, we have many dreams every night, so I wasn't technically dreamless. But, for that whole year, I couldn't remember any of my dreams. You know the feeling where you know you had a dream, and you can kind of remember it, but not enough to comprehend it? I didn't even experience that phenomena. I just... couldn't remember.
Now, thankfully, I'm into a new stage. I remember my dreams, and they've all been pretty pleasant. But my dreams are still weird. It really does seem like I'm awake in many of them. I can tell when I'm dreaming in most of them (like last night's dream. I knew I didn't have to rush from the mall to church, I knew that I didn't have to worry about driving the opposite way of where I needed to be going... I knew all of that). But then I have other dreams... Dreams where everything just... feels so real. I can feel genuine emotions, I can touch things and actually feel them, I can smell things, I can taste things...
Oh, and the whole theory about if you die in a dream, you'll actually die? So not true. I've died plenty of times in my dreams, and I'm still alive. I was shot once, and I could feel just how painful it was to have that bullet go through my chest, to feel myself slowly bleeding to death. I don't suggest it, by the way. Note to everyone: Try to avoid being shot.

Anyway, I'm really not sure why I went off on a dream ramble, but I did. And actually, this isn't what I wanted to ramble about pertaining to dreams. I decided to stop myself before I said something I would regret, thus putting at least two of my friendships in danger. Yay self-control! =]

Goodnight everyone!

Kelsey

Realizations.

I've done a lot of thinking the past few weeks. I'm hitting that stage in life- the stage where I realize that your childhood really does fly by. Is it sad that I'm only 17 years old and I'm really feeling the effects of this? Well, okay, that's probably normal. But still!

I was watching Bug Juice this week, and that pretty much led to an emotional breakdown. I loved that show when I was little. I STILL love that show! But I realized it was filmed eleven years ago. ELEVEN YEARS! Watching these kids (who are waaay older than me, actually) made me think of my own times at camp. I miss those days... A week away from parents, at a camp with hundreds of kids, a lake, bad food, games, chapel, too much sugar, and huge bugs (cockroaches, anyone?)... the makings of a good summer camp. Of course, this made me realize something huge: this is the last summer that I'm able to go to camp. That doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but it was to me. It really symbolizes the end of my childhood. Oh, nostalgia...

Then I started watching old Nickelodeon shows. You know, the good shows: Salute Your Shorts, Hey Dude!, Legends of the Hidden Temple, David the Gnome, Gulla Gulla Island, Kablam!, All That, Weinerville, Rugrats, Doug, and all those other amazing shows. Oh man, the memories...

Today was graduation. I didn't go, sadly. I was exhausted from taking my sister to the airport this morning (after less than an hour of sleep), and I felt really sick. So I stayed home. And, of course, I realized that it's going to be ME graduating next year. Not only will I be graduating from high school, I'm going to be graduating from COLLEGE. Next June, I'll have my AA. Now THAT is a weird feeling.

I'm working harder than ever at trying to get scholarships. I've looked at waaaay too many Christian colleges these past few months. In a little over a year, I'm going to (hopefully) be away at one of these colleges. I'll be on my own. I'll be trying to make it through a Worship Arts program. I'll be embarking on a very, VERY unstable career path. Soon after, I'll be thinking about marriage. Then a family. Then... well, you get the picture. When did I grow up? Seriously. It seems like just yesterday I was crying to Ms. Joleen in preschool because Danielle didn't want to be my friend anymore (even though she's my cousin, so it didn't really matter...).

Wow. I really do feel old. I'm in college. I have one year left until I leave home. Well, if I get scholarships, that is. I can't afford tuition at any of my college choices... and I'll still gladly accept donations, of course =]

Kelsey