Do You Know How To Breathe?!

Are you having difficulties getting all the oxygen in? Well, I've been recently introduced to this new breathing exercise. So the first step, exhale. The suck in as much air as possible through your nose as fast as possible! Then shoot the air out through a "puhhh!" shaped mouth. And then suck in your stomach, pull a face and hold your breath for 10 sec! If you need a wonderful demonstration by my fabulous 80s assistant, check this out. hahha I was laughing my face off. :D

Life

I finally got my track schedule for BYU-Idaho and I'm a spring/fall girl. So classes start Sept 10th. Crazy, I'm going to college! I"m so ready to get there too, I'm ready to be out of my high school! As much as I at time love it, I'm ready for new people.

I will be legal in 2 weeks! Countdown has begun...

My loan is halfway payed off! And if I keep up how much I've been paying, it'll be payed off the month of my tour. Which is one of my goals for the new year.

Aaron hasn't been good for me to talk to lately... he keeps going off on Europe and I just get so carried away, my focus is gone and senior-itis comes in full force...not good for me. I just need to keep busy busy so I don't notice if I have senior-itis or not.

Sweet song I found... I like her. Different, and her accent is awesome!

Music

Well Saturday was our first rehearsal for my Europe tour! We got 12 pieces of music and ran through them (well more like skimmed the surface) in 3 hours. Our pieces range from fast rhythmic, to a blues fast feel, to German, French, Latin (of course), to just really pretty sounding pieces, traditional and the slow choir specials. I'm sooo excited! It's a little overwhelming right now, because you have to learn and memorize all the songs and be ready by the next rehearsal. Which isn't until June, so that's wonderful, but some of these songs...dah will be a challenge to learn. I'm mostly thinking of the pronunciation in the German and French songs... mostly french. (I cannot speak or sing french for the life of me).

Along with all these new choir pieces, I still have my school choir songs to work on! Which are way fun! I love them! And once I find good recordings I'll post them on here.

Snow Shoeing

So i went to my "dad's gym" today. aka the WiLd. aka the canyon. aka snow shoeing. And my legs are kind of jello feeling right now. I just drag them along. But it was a lot of fun! We went off the trail which is TONS better then the hard patted down road of a trail. We went off roading, onto the mountain side in the powder. Pretty sure my snow shoes were slicker on the bottom then my dads, because i was sliding down every little hill. Basically a ridiculous matter. But I loved it! My dad took off one of his snow shes to show the difference. Yeah step down and your knee high in snow. Major difference!!

Part of the way we stopped so I could take my heart rate, and counting that was crazy! In 30 sec I had 86 beats, so my heart rate was 172! So, good work out, felt wonderful. Perfect temperature after you got your body warmed up a little. But all in all I really enjoyed it. The snow is gorgeous up there. Next full moon we're heading up at night! Excitment!

Things Are Happening!

Well things are happening here! To start, yesterday I finally got my braces off! Don't ask how long I've had them cause that's a ridiculous matter. But just know they're finally off! Nate also got his license yesterday...so motzi is no longer only mine. And with nate's early morning soccer practices, he gets to take the car, and i get to bum rides off people. Oh well, at least i don't have to take him at 6 am... i'm still asleep! Today, I found out i passed my CNA state certification test! So i'm now a true blue CNA... which I most likely won't get a job in. But hurray for the finish of anxiety of waiting for test results! I also found out today my good ole science project was one of the 30 chosen to go to district! blah.....! but you get extra credit for going, and in accordance to the test score i just got, i'm gonna need it. So! Off to district. Good thing my graph colors are good. :D he liked that part.. haha

Well i'm going snow shoeing with my papa later today, so we'll see how that goes.

Finally!

So I have finally received the anticipated email from BYU-Idaho... and yes I am in! Gal it only took them the full 6 weeks to make a decision.

Honors Choir

It's finally over and done! Weird I'll say that one. We had our Honor Choir tonight, with chamber choirs from 8 high schools throughout Utah, singing British Masterworks, and conducted by Dr. Craig Jessop. We've been working on this music since our first concert. Friday was the first time all the choir students were together singing, we rehearsed from 3:30-5:30, had dinner and then had another rehearsal 7:30-9:30 finally being directed by Craig Jessop. And oh my goodness, I absolutely love having him as our director. Right when he started working with us, it was a whole new choir. We were focused and and I had so much fun. It was hard though. More then 10 hours of rehearsal in a span of 2 days is a bit draining. I'm surprised I still have a voice.

We sang 4 pieces of music. Some were extremely difficult. Hands down the hardest music I've learned and sung. The first was Let the People Praise Thee, O God by William Mathias which was written for Princess Diana's wedding. That song has the strangest rhythm, at first you feel like your fighting and trying to jump in on some off beat to your part, but once we understood it and started digging for the musicality and the dynamics, it became a work of genius. The intertwining harmonies are insane.
The second piece was Linden Lea by R. Vaughan Williams. Which was the easiest of all of them, simple but very pretty. I liked it.
The third piece was the renowned incredible three movement piece of Gloria by John Rutter. Oh my how I absolutely loved love this song. We had six people there for the orchestra part also. The first movement is fast and strong with intense orchestra parts. The second movement slows down a lot and has some insane organ solo throughout the whole movement. But i thought it sounded the best when you had the choir parts. Made the organ solo a bit more interesting. The third movement which was my favorite!! is intense, quick and very rhythmic. It's for sure the funnest section. And we were a powerhouse and had such an amazing sound quality.
The last piece was Psalm 148 by Gustav Holst. I love this song and the men...ahhh they had a section of the song in 4 part men harmony. GORGEOUS! they sounded amazing and i just about melted. We ended that song with this huge strong chord and Craig Jessop had the organ drop out so it was just the choir... ah and when we cut it off the sound just resonated. I loved it. loved it all...

But talking to the parents afterward...they were just blown away by our sound. And all i have to say is Craig Jessop knows how to get the sound he's looking for out of a choir. He transformed us. And I had such a fun time singing with him. It was an honor! And it was worth all the ridiculous amounts of practicing and trying to learn that insane music. :D

Almost there...

Just the weekend left! And i'm done with this semester! And am i ready to be done and moving on with new classes. I had projects due in english, chemistry, and health science adv this week. Tests in health science, english, cna, and then my major state test in cna. All of this in one week!! So i'm a bit burned out, but I just need to last through rehearsal all day friday, rehearsal saturday and then our performance! My chamber choir is singing in an honors choir, with a whole bunch of other chamber choirs in utah, and we're being directed by craig jessop. i'm pretty excited... well i'm ready to move onto new music really, but performing Gloria is going to be awesome. With the full orchestra and everyone else. It'll be cool.

Pictures from New Years

New Years Eve Adventures...

Well! For our new years eve, we traveled by train to Colorado! Which i will say was soo much fun! Eight hours on a train seems long, but it wasn't. It was relaxing. My dad being the kid that he is... found a window on the lower section of the train that you could open, so we stuck our heads out and pretty much got shot with the wind. It was intense. We had an awesome omish family on the train with us! ha it killed me and my sneaky dad got pictures... they were the whole packet.. 5 little boys.. all in their cute suspenders and plain shirts, straw hats. That family worked the hats.

So we finally arrive and all i can think of is this song from the movie, the unsinkable molly brown, which i can't find on youtube but if you've seen the movie it's the Colorado, My Home song...

The hotel we stayed at is the Hotel Colorado, rich in history and "other residents." (it's haunted) But some of the historic figures that have stayed there are Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. The famous Buffalo Bill, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Al Capone also stayed at the hotel.



So for new years eve, there is a huge natural hot spring pool across the street, it's 2 city blocks long. The smaller pool is 104 degrees and they suggest only 5-10 intervals...yeah right. and the bigger pool is 90 degrees. But we were hot springin into the new year! The pools were packed, the 104 degree pool was body to body..you could barely move. There were around twelve hundred people in the hot spring!! How insane is that! It's winter, maybe 20 degrees outside and you're in a swimsuit looking at snow just out of the pool on the sidewalk.... weird weird. But it was fun! Definately a different new years eve i've ever had... everyone had party hats and noise makers. It was so steamy and foggy, you couldn't see people if they were more then 5 ft away. So that was a little weird walking up on people... hahah



The only part that sucked was getting back to the hotel after swimming. Your freezing cold standing out in the 20 degree air in a wet swimsuit while trying to throw clothes on as fast as you can and then running up and across the street to the hotel...COLD!!

So that was my new years eve... it was awesome. I absolutely loved it.