Back from the Dead

So I just met you... and this is crazy, but here's a blog post, keep reading maybe? Hey all! That is, if anyone ends up seeing this post. Splendid Life is back from the dead and more splendid than ever! I actually don't know if I'll be regularly updating this blog again. I'd love to, but we all know how that goes. This post is just to let me remind myself that this is here and I should try to use it every once in a while, even if that means going months or years without posting anything. So, if you're reading this, thank you for putting up with my nonsense! Now feel free to carry on and, who knows, maybe you'll be reading more of my random thoughts in the near future. Have a fantastical day!

It's Game Time!!

I don't know if anyone still reads this thing, but if you do, thank you. And I'm sorry for letting you down and not being a good blogger. I have a favor to ask of you though. I entered my #6 photo in the contest I talked about a few days ago and I would love it if you took the time to visit my photo and vote for it. You can do this every 24 hours until the contest ends. There are some amazing photos on there and it would mean so much if you made the effort to vote for mine. You don't have to though. If you see an amazing photo that you just have to use your vote for, go for it!! You only get one vote per day though. I know the chances of me winning this thing are very slim, but hey! It's worth a try :) Well, thanks for the support!

My picture has a link up there but I'll put one here too in case you're confused. It's right here:

Exploring the Coast

You. Are. Awesome!

-Bri

Photo Contest

Hello blogging world!!! I apologize for not posting anything good recently--a lot's been going on lately. The reason for this post is a photo contest I want to enter. I figure that I probably won't come in first or anywhere close, but it's good for the experience and to get involved. So I need your help. If you wouldn't mind, I would be super happy if you took the time to simply visit my photography blog and comment on which photo is your favorite under the most recent post. Then I'll have an idea of which photo I should submit and... well yeah, it will just make the whole decision-making process a lot easier! :) So all it takes is a couple of minutes from your life and a few movements of your fingers to type which one you liked best... that's all. Thank you! Here's the link to my photography blog:

Brianna's Blog

Boom, right there. All righty then, thanks for taking care of that! I'll have something up sooner or later but much better than videos and requests for all of you. Have a wonderful weekend!

-Bri

Well that's cool!

When we went on our cruise last month, there were a couple of guys who were taping for KING5 and one of the videos they did was about the kids and teens program on the ship. And they just came out with it a couple days ago so here it is!



So it was kind of fun! But a bit awkward at the same time. I don't know what they did with Cam since I wasn't around when they taped her, but it was funny when they had Noelle act like she was sleeping and had us both walk around, like we hung out there all. the. time. We didn't though. But we loved the coordinators, Amye and Tyler! They were pretty awesome and we miss them a lot! Well, it was a pretty cool experience and we had some fun with it!

So you, whoever you might be!, can check out the other video clips they did while on our cruise about the different towns we visited too at king5.com under the Evening Magazine section. All the "Cruising to..." clips have people we met on board in them which is kind of cool... so we were pretty much surrounded by celebrities throughout the whole vacation! :)

Well, that's that. Maybe I'll post photos from our trip someday... we'll see if I do or not. I probably will but it might just take a while. I apologize for not being the best blogger lately. All righty then, take care and enjoy your day!

Aaaand we're back!!

Well, I obviously haven't posted anything on here for a long time. Half of it is that I've been pretty busy with homework, school, and other very important things dealing with family and friends, half of it is that I forgot about the whole world of blogging, and most of it is that I've just put it off every time I've had the chance to post something new. Soooo get ready for a mildly long post today! Just mildly long. All righty, here we go!

At the end of October, our Girls and Boys varsity teams went down to State in Soda Springs for XC. Even though our guys were disappointed that they didn't place first like they planned, they still did a spectacular job and got a whoppin' 3rd place! Our girls did great too and we had a really fun time all around.

Towards the beginning of November, our school had our annual Buff n Tuff boys volleyball tournament. I always have a good time cheering on friends with those of us who can't or choose not to participate in the games. This year, we had the coolest cheer leaders ever and the team we were rootin' for, Mormons -1, got 4th overall! (Correct me if I'm wrong :). ) It was a great night!

Then my family and I had my friend, Jessie, take our family photos. The Rhoads have this really cool barn in their backyard so we took them there and, even though it was super cold and everyone was kind of stressed, we got some good stuff. Thanks Jessie for taking them! And thanks Family for being awesome!

Then when the 7th Harry Potter movie came out, the Grimms had a party at their house. We were all assigned characters from the movies and I was given the glorious part of Colin Creevey. We had a super fun time feasting, playing games, talking and, of course, going to see the movie. (Top Left: Brook [Molly Weasley], Noelle [Cho Chang], Alyssa [Tonks] & Katie [Madam Pompfrey] eating deliciousness; Top Middle: Emmalee [Professor Trelawney] & Cole [Neville Longbottom] goofing off; Top Right: Noelle, Brianna [Colin Creevey] & Alyssa before the party; Right Middle: Garrett [Harry Potter], Cody [Professor Lupin] & Kendall [Ginny Weasley] waiting in line; Bottom Right: Noelle, Brook & Brianna playing Uno while waiting in line; Bottom Left: Courtney [Luna Lovegood], Noelle, Emmalee, Jennifer [Moaning Murtle], Mandy [Lavender Brown] & Alyssa just chillin')

The day after the party, we had Best of EFY!! I love stake dances anyways, so the EFY dance is even better. It's just so fun being around friends and going crazy! :) (Top Left: Ariel, Dan, Alora & Matt; Top Middle: Hayden, Kendall, David, Mitch, Amanda, Courtney, Mandy, Emmalee, Janessa & Allie; Top Right: Mandy, Courtney, Brianna & Jamin... and Alex's arms in the background; Bottom Left: Brianna, Autumn, Malia, Emmalee, Nicole & Mandy; Bottom Middle: Brianna & Brook acting normal... we try; Bottom Right: Alex, Mandy, Erin, Autumn, Noelle, Brook & Dakota)

For this month, Noelle and I kicked it off with a Christmas get-together with some friends. We had fun mostly playing Just Dance on the Wii. If you don't have this game, get it. Best game ever! A few of us also went caroling and we watched Elf and just ate and talked. It was fun and I'm glad that those who came made it! (Top Left: Brook, David, Brianna & Bonnie with their "BM" mustaches; Top Right: Ashlee, Abbey & Alyssa sittin' around, being awesome; Bottom Left: Jeff, Jamin & David; Bottom Center: Alex, David & Jeff bustin' a move!; Bottom Right: Kendall, Amanda, Brianna, Brook & Emmalee)

Each year, my family has the tradition of going on the North Pole Cruise and we usually join our friends the Priebes, Jeskes, Gunnersons, Caudles, Drydens... lots of people! This year, my parents went to Noelle's orchestra concert while I took the three younger ones and we still had a good time! Thanks to anyone who helped out with my siblings so I could take a few snap shots of everyone and mess around for a little bit. We all had a great time :) (Top Left: Mandy, Emmalee, Courtney & Brianna doing what we do best :); Top Right: Kaitlyn, Courtney, Emmalee, Mandy, Jamin, David, Alex & Brianna; Bottom Left: Emmalee & Brianna; Bottom Center: Steven, David & Cam waiting to get to the North Pole; Bottom Right: Courtney & Brianna)

And finally... other important stuff that's happened since my last post!!! First, Thanksgiving, of course!! This year my family joined the Smidts, my Nana & Pops, and the Thompsons up at Nana and Pops Smidt's house. The food was scrumptious! The next day we went to the holiday parade with the Thompsons, Nana & Pops and watched fireworks. Then I got my drivers license finally on the 16th... that was a relief! My mom also got her port removed last month so she is officially done with everything! That's her with her awesome doctor, Dr. Quinn. And in the middle there... those are just my little brothers being the goofballs that they are. I love those kids!!

Well, thanks for surviving this lengthy post!! Hopefully, I'll begin to keep on top of things again starting right this minute. Now go eat something.

Regionals Baby!!

Yesterday, our cross country team went to Lewiston for our Regionals meet. Let's just say that not only does Lewiston stink as in "Phew, that smells disgusting!" but they also weren't very prepared for this meet. But I'm not going to bash on them because we all still had a pretty good time!

Well, we started off our "journey" with a team dinner at Andrew Reagan's house the night before our races. We had the usual--spaghetti. Spaghetti never gets old though! That's one of the great things about cross country is that you get it every week :).

Gotta love meal-time photos! :)

 Noelle and Erin were sharing secrets, so Jake and Michael, thought it would be funny to imitate them... it was pretty funny.

And this really probably isn't significant to any of you, but this week, we had BLUE Gatorade! And it was scrumptious! We usually have yellow, but blue was a delicious change and everyone absolutely loved it!

Okay, onward! After that team dinner, we all went to bed, then woke up, some of us went to school (some of us skipped...), and loaded up on the bus at 9:30 am. And here's our adventure starting from then!

Everyone doing their thing before the races...

This was the JV Girls race... our team got 2nd! I think this is the best JV Girls have done in a long time, so good job, girls!

We have way too many JV Boys, which is a good thing, but I'm not going to put up a picture of every single guy... sorry, I know you all were dying to see all of them :). Our JV Boys got 1st and they had some fantastic races! Way to go, guys!

And our Varsity girls!! They did amazing!!! They got 1st place for the first time in around 6 years so that says something. I'm so stinkin' proud of you all :). Oh, and that's Malia in the bottom right corner. She's in Lakeland 1st ward and I had an empty space on this collage, so I plopped her in there... anyway, she's awesome too!

And then there are our Varsity Boys. They got 1st as a team too and an almost perfect score of 16! Our boys are amazing and that's pretty much all there is to say!

Sorry LCHS, but you got beaten. Badly. Muaha!

Everyone on our team just goofing off during the awards ceremony... gotta love 'em!

Aaaaand on our way back from the meet. That's Kendall, Courtney, Noelle and me with Malia, Courtney, Kendall, Alex and me at Burger King (we sneaked over there while everyone was buying dinner at Albertson's :) ), me eating a 16-layer Oreo cookie, and Cody with Jessie! Yeah, we had a good time!

And that's Regionals! Hope you enjoyed it!

SURPRISE!!!

I am now making this "blog-official". Before my grandparents left Coeur d'Alene to go back to San Diego, they had my sisters and me solve this little puzzle last week. We were given a box full of sand with a bunch of Scrabble letters in it and told to find all the letters and spell out what we thought they were supposed to say. 

We got a few letters and I jokingly spelled out "fiesta" but surprisingly that was one of the words... and the next word was "mexican".

So then they told us to say what we thought this meant. We wanted to say what we thought but we thought it was too good to be true. But it's not! They told us we're going...

on a cruise along the shore of Mexico in January!! We're all so excited and super thankful for this amazing surprise! It's going to be a blast!