every little thing

Sometimes when it's really late at night and I need to take a break from my homework I....

..paint over a picture of my sister and me.

I don't even know how I found the particular website that I was on, but it was basically like the old school Paint program. I just uploaded a picture and then started playing around with it. I decided it would be cool if I completely painted over it to make it look like a real painting. I didn't use any special program or feature, I went through section by section and painted over it with the little paintbrush. Nothing is left un painted.

It was fun and actually pretty relaxing for my brain. And I like the finished product.

And don't worry. I finished my homework afterward.

a kind of magic

"It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up" --Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter is over. Of course I went to the midnight showing. Of course I went with Ariel. Of course we saw it in 3D with the special-edition Harry Potter-shaped glasses. Of course I brought my wand and my owl. Of course I cried.

I was the first person in my third grade class to read the first Harry Potter book. I've read all the books--mostly at about 1:00 in the morning on the day they came out. I've seen all the movies. As Harry got older, so did I. As the books got darker, I got more mature. I fell in love with the characters. I knew them by name. Hogwarts was a real place that I went back to in my mind just as Harry did in every book.

I was so excited to see this last movie (and it was absolutely incredible), but in the back of my mind, I was slightly dreading it. I didn't want to say goodbye to something that has been a part of my life for the last twelve years. That's more than half my life. Harry Potter--the books and the movies--was such a magical journey. As Daniel Radcliffe said, this is not the end of the story because "each and every person...who have followed these films over the last ten years will carry this story with them through the rest of their lives and it will affect what they do."

It's been magical. Thanks, hp. I'll love you for always.

it's a hard life

Last Saturday, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning along with Ariel, a couple of her roommates and a couple friends, and we drove down to electric beach to swim with dolphins! It was absolutely incredible.

Siara, me, Ariel, Neco, Alayna and Julia before we headed out:

None of us had ever been there before, but luckily there were a couple other groups of BYU students there that knew what they were doing. We had to swim SO far out to sea! Probably about a half mile. It was really good that those other kids were there, because we probably would have stopped and given up before seeing any dolphins. But we didn't give up and it was so worth it because we definitely saw some dolphins!

There were so many dolphins everywhere! There was one moment where I was about eight inches away from touching a dolphin and there were tons swimming underneath me and all around me! It was pretty magical. A couple boats came around filled with tourists who payed at least $100 just to drive past and watch the dolphins, where we were right there with them without having to pay anything.

We were out in the water for quite a while and took tons of pictures. The dolphins just kept swimming past us and under us and at the end, we saw them jumping up and doing tricks and flips out of the water. Our own show out in the wild.

It was actually really hard to swim all the way out there because the tide was so strong, it kept pulling us back into shore, so I borrowed this kid's flippers and they definitely helped, but they were a little too big for me so they kept rubbing back and forth against my foot and I ended up with a huge blister. Even today, a week later, it still hurts, but it was such a fun day! I would do it all over again even if it meant getting another blister.

party

We enjoyed a very lovely Fourth of July here on the island. Ariel was house sitting her bishop's house and we spent a lot of time over there. They had told her she could have friends over whenever she wanted, so on Sunday the 3rd, we hosted a little birthday party for America. We invited friends over, grilled some hamburgers/veggie burgers, ate, laughed talked, played games. We even had a patriotic cake with red and blue swirls of food coloring in it. Ariel and I had some creative differences when it came to the swirls, but we worked it out in the end.

On the actual fourth, Ariel and I slept in then drove down into town and did some shopping. We ran into a couple of her friends in the evening so we ate dinner with them and then hooked up with some boys from town that they knew to watch the fireworks at the beach. We thought we were just going to be sitting on the beach, but the boys had a different idea: to swim out into the bay and watch the fireworks from there. It meant that Ariel and I had to drive home completely soaked and uncomfortable, but it was worth it! It was so fun to be out in the water with the fireworks exploding right above us.

Not very traditional, but a very satisfying Fourth of July.

in spite of all the danger

yes, it was that cool in real life.

[and maybe a little bit illegal]

barbed wire didn't stop savanah and me

and we had a really great adventure.