If you are thinking early birthday presents...

Then I am thinking tickets to... THE FRAY!!! Oh, with Jack's Mannequin. June 18, 2009 at the USANA Ampitheater.

I am going to find a way to go.

Capitol Reef

My mom said that there is nowhere in the world quite like Southern Utah, and I agree. Our family spent four days down at Capitol Reef enduring the freezing mornings and nights, and enjoying the warm and beautifully unique afternoon hikes. From the most popular trails to the most remote ones, the scenery was mindblowing. One of the highlights of the trip for me was hiking up to ancient Fremont Indian petroglyphs and pictographs. To stay on top of track, and make up for all of the missed practices, I volunteered to carry Stanford through the hikes. I expect to see my mile time improve dramatically! Overall, I loved spending Spring Break immersed in nature with my family.

Reflection in a street puddle

FBLA State!

I am a member of Hillcrest's Future Business Leaders of America. I love this club because of the great club members, fun conferences, and my interest in business.
This past week my FBLA chapter went to Ogden for a few days to attend the annual State competition. Our chapter performed very well at the previous Regional competition, and in the end we surpassed our expectations for State! We arrived at the Marriott Wednesday evening, and after lots of pillow fights and movies finally got to bed. Thursday was the big day for our competitive events.
I signed up for the Introduction to Business test, Introduction to Parliamentary Procedures test, and Parliamentary Procedures group event. The group event was causing me some stress because it was the day of and I still hadn't written anything for us to present! The presentation was typically supposed to last eleven minutes, and I was having trouble even getting a couple of sentences to flow. There was also the issue that to even move on to the performance part, my team needed to pass the preliminary test. The group included Namisha, Becca, Jason, and Eryn who weren't familiar with parli pro. I had forgotten a lot of it too. Nevertheless, at 10 AM we were sitting in the testing room wading through 100 questions of parli pro designed torture. An hour later after we had completed the test, we went to help our friend Albert Cui campaign for Metro Region Vice President. Sixty minutes later, we checked the results and we had passed! This was in no way a relief. I rushed back to our hotel and with the help of Namisha, a laptop, and an iPhone I typed up a two page script in about twenty minutes. Namisha told me she would gather the group together while I sprinted back to the testing building to take my Into to Business test. An hour later I snatched Jason away from Albert's campaign booth, and we ran back to the hotel to practice practice practice.
I think the biggest help to our performance was the two and a half hour holding time before we presented. As a group, we sat in a circle and probably went through everything about twenty times until everything flowed smoothly. Ten minutes before our time, the stress was building. Luckily Jason was there to provide some comic relief. Eryn and I also ran and jumped around the room, and eventually we were all giggling so much that most of the nerves were gone. We were given twenty minutes to work a situation they had given us into our existing script and then... show time! Eleven minutes later you would have seen a very happy and relieved group of kids burst out of the judging room. We all felt good about what we had managed to accomplish in only a few short hours. It was such a great feeling to know that we had put everything we could into it, and I was very lucky to have a group that was willing to work so hard. Everyone agreed that we would do this again next year, only next time with a bit more preparation beforehand.
The only regret was by Namisha who wished she had said something other than, "I believe we should send a more qualified representative who can talk better and um...stuff like that." That night we all partied it up. I had some good Mexican food, and then we went bowling! I got two strikes, and a million gutter balls. I guess this means I need to go more often. That night our group went to a dance. It was really apparent that FBLAers are not all the stuffy business nerds they might appear to be because the dance was quite wild. I had a fun time dancing around with our group, and Blake and I are convinced that we started a mosh to Disturbia. Just hanging out was most fun that I had had in a very long time.
Friday was the day of my big test- Intro to Parliamentary procedures. I placed first in Region with this test, and was feeling a ton of pressure to do just as well that day. After reading through the FBLA Bylaws one last time, I went to take the test at 8 AM. I walked out of the testing room after I was done feeling very unsure but satisfied that I had done the best that I could. Julie and I enjoyed some hot chocolate by the hotel fire after that, and we packed up our rooms while we waited for the final awards ceremony. Finally the time came, all of the many Utah FBLA chapters gathered together in the grand ballroom. To the relief of our Hillcrest chapter, Albert Cui was elected as Metro Region VP (not because we thought he wouldn't- we didn't like his competition very much). It will be great to have someone from Hillcrest represent us on a State level, and I am glad Albert is the one to do it! Then came the part that I was really waiting for...Intro to Parli results. My nerves were shooting through the roof, and I felt like I was going to throw up, cry, and pass out all at the same time. It was very overwhelming! They called up the top ten placing students to the front, and began the count down to the first place. I stood up on the stage with my arms wrapped around my stomach, mentally counting down the places. Tenth place, ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth...I was still up. The top two spots went on to Nationals so as long as I wasn't third. I felt a rush of dizziness. Third...Second... FIRST! Through all of the stress and worry, the best part of winning honestly was hearing everyone from Hillcrest out in the crowd cheering. I accepted the trophy, and walked back. Overall Hillcrest did very very well. We surpassed our goal of sending five students to nationals by one! I won ninth place for Intro to Business, and my Parli Pro team took fifth in state! I can't wait for Nationals in Anaheim at the end of June with the Julie, Andrew, Takami, Brad, and Albert. I also can't wait to continue having great experiences with everyone as a group.