London Called

London is one of my favorite places on earth. Honestly, London and the entirety of England is a second home to me. It holds a certain charm for me that I can never truly release, even though I haven't lived there for about ten years, and I've only been back to visit twice. In short, I simply love it. Here are some of the pictures from my most recent of visits to London--the IB Theater trip!

Pret is the most amazing sandwich shop ever...literally.

Our Theater group. They're pretty cool--worth spending five days in London with, anyway.

That is the London eye. It's a huge farris wheel. And it's pretty nifty.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
Deliciousness mixed with joy, all in one cup. Starbucks--it's the place to be.
This play was extremely funny. It's a spoof an the old Alfred Hitchcock movie "The 39 Steps". There were four actors playing 139 roles in 100 minutes. Amazing!

Taco Night

Last night, my family had tacos for dinner. We like tacos. We think they're tasty, especially since you can't get real Mexican food here in India (although we have found one restraunt that does a pretty good job). However, whenever I think of tacos, I invariably think of my sister, Heather.

Now, we all have our curious little traits that make us special. One of Heather's curious traits involves tacos. Heather has a very specific way of eating her tacos. She likes to break the tacos when she eats them. But she has to do it in a certain way. First, Heather gets a taco shell. Second, Heather fills the taco shell with stuffings such as meat, cheese, olives (must have olives because olives are delicious), lettuce, etc. Once Heather has finished filling her taco, she breaks the taco shell in half. Heather then proceeds to eat the taco shell first and afterwards eat the stuffings, as if that was exactly how a taco was meant to be eaten. Of course, Heather CANNOT take a broken shell on the first step. No, no, that would ruin the process.

Don't get me wrong--I am not writing this post to mock Heather in any way, shape, or form. We do that enough as a family on taco nights. I just find it very amusing, and I always think of Heather whenever I eat tacos. So, in a way, you could definitely see this post as one sister's tribute to another, as I do. Heather, I love you and your strange taco habits.

Who knows, maybe I'll write about Chelsey and one of her weird habits next.

18

Today is a special day, and I'm sure all of you know why. And if you don't, I'd be more than willing to share with you. Today is my birthday. Woohoo! Now, this birthday is special because I turn 18, which means that I am a legal adult. You know what they say: "You can turn into an official adult only once!" It's very exciting.

I think birthday's are unique and special things. Birthday's are the one out of 365 days when a person can be completely and utterly vain and selfish and totally get away with it. I mean, think about it. You get a special cake made just to your liking, in my family we get a special Sunday dinner held in our honor (which is a pretty big deal since Sunday dinners are the biggest and best meals in my family), you get multiple presents which hopefully include money, and EVERBODY pays attention to you, even if they didn't ever pay attention to you before.

I was thinking about past birthdays, and especially my past two birthday which ocurred in India. My first birthday in India was my "Sweet Sixteenth", although it didn't turn out to be so sweet. I was the "new kid" at school so no one knew me except for three people, and they didn't even really say happy birthday. The next year was better, since I actually had friends that year. Thanks mostly to Maddie, my seventeenth birthday was celebrated in and out of school, which was awesome. This is my third birthday in India, and it was by far the best. I talked to both of my sisters and Maddie today, I got to spend the whole day being a girl (manicures, pedicures, chick flicks, that kind of thing), and I have a whole slew of people wishing me happy birthday on Facebook. It's awesome being known.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and presents--you all made my day so much brighter.

It's a New Year!

Happy New Year's everyone!


I'm going to steal from Chelsey's blog, just so you all know. She invited all of us (those who read her blog) to list some positive things which happened in the year 2008. I know this may seem a little contradictory, since the title of this post implies that we will be discussing the year 2009, but we'll get to that later, I promise. So here it is, the best of 2008:

• My second niece was born! Her name is Averi Noelle and she is so sweet. We got to cuddle a lot at Christmas .
• I got to go to London at the beginning of the year with my theater class and do workshops at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London).
• I became close friends with Maddie Stoker, who now attends BYU (so now there's someone else I can play with in Utah).
• I finished the first year of the International Baccalaureate.
• I finished writing the first 25 pages (or three chapters and a prologue) of my novel (which is impressive for me because I usually only write about ten pages of novels).

2008 was a truly amazing year (I attribute that to the fact that it was my "magic year"; I turned 17 on the 17th of January), so it would be extremely difficult to list all of the highlights. Those were just a few that really stuck out in my mind. As for 2009, I have high hopes for this year. First of all, I graduate from high school. Yay! And it will be just in time too because senior-itis is really getting to me. Also, I've been accepted into two of the BYU campasses, Idaho and Hawaii, so I know I'm going to college one way or another. It's nice to have that knowledge, believe me. Some of my resolutions for 2009 are:

• Write in my journal every day
• Finish a good chunk of the novel I've been working on ("a good chunk" would imply at least another hundred pages).

I hope you all have an amazing 2009, and keep working on those resolutions!

Concerning Christmas, Twilight, and Other Matters of Extreme Frivolousness

Christmas is over. And to console myself, I am going to write about nothing but frivolous things. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, as I have stated in my previous post. For Christmas this year, we did all the fun traditions that my family has done for as long as I can remember. We had our Barnes Family Christmas Party, where everyone gets dressed up, Dad cooks up a fantastic feast (which we live off of for the next week), and, best of all, Santa makes a house call and gives everyone presents. The Christmas Party is a pretty big deal in our family, and it's one of the highlights of the season.

Another big deal is Christmas morning (obviously). On Christmas Eve, Dad begins to prepare Christmas breakfast (food is a major part of our family). We always have quiche, sausage and egg casserole, and German apple pancakes. Once everyone gathers together on Christmas morning, we run into the Great Room and open stockings. Then come the presents. After a couple of hours of ripping off wrapping paper and showing off new toys, we eat. And eat. And eat some more. It's pretty awesome.

Christmas afternoon is devoted to the Christmas movie. This Christmas we saw The Tale of Despereaux, which is based on the book by Katie DiCamillo. The movie was pretty good (but of course the book is better). It wasn't my favorite movie that I've seen this holiday though. My favorite movie would have to have been Twilight. Now, I am very much a girl, which is probably why I am so much in love with the Twilight series. I can't really explain why I love Twilight so much because Stephenie Meyer (the woman who wrote the series) is not an incredible writer, and the acting in the movie was only mediocre, although the soundtrack is amazing. However, I would be willing to read that series at least a dozen more times, and I would be willing to watch the movie at least a dozen more times, if not more. Girls will do weird things like that; it's how we work.

Now that Christmas is past, we all get to look forward to the year of 2009. It should be a serious year. I'm officially an adult in about three weeks, I graduate in May, and I start college in June (cross your fingers and knock on wood). But I think, as those merciless IB exams are looming up at me, that we shouldn't let the year get too serious. Sometimes, a little frivolousness is all we need to make things a whole lot better.

Home for the Holidays

Yes, I am home for the holidays, and I am loving it! All of my family is together for Christmas, including my sister Chelsey and her family (her husbnad Aaron and her kids Katie, Paul, and baby Averi) who live in New Mexico. Let me tell you, it's absolutely wonderful to have everyone home for the holidays (we won't attribute this wonderful feeling that I'm having now to the fact that I am currently not in a place where almost everybody drives me crazy). We have a lot of really fun things planned for the Christmas holidays, aside from our usual Christmas traditions. As we are preparing for this most amazing of holidays, I'm starting to think of all the reasons why I love Christmas time. Here are a few of them, in no particular order.

• Family's get together, and like each other, for an extended period of time.
• Snow makes everything look prettier.
• Christmas gives us an opportunity to give to others.
• Christ is the focus at Christmas time.
• Santa comes! I don't care how old you are, Santa always comes.
• You get free stuff. I know that sounds really materialistic, and it is, but hey, I'm always up for free stuff.
• Christmas is the time of the year when you bake the most, so the house smells amazing.
• Christmas songs are beautiful.
• Christmas lights are beautiful.
• You are allowed to feel like a little kid again at Christmas.

Those are just a few of the reasons why Christmas is my favorite holiday, and why I love coming home for the holidays. As Christmas approaches, maybe we should all think a little bit more about why we love Christmas. I promise, it will make you even more excited for that magical Christmas morning.

P.S. Even though I know Santa doesn't have flesh and bones like everyone else, I will always believe in Santa. Without Santa, a little bit of the magic of Christmas is gone. I encourage everyone to believe in Santa. Merry Christmas!

Something I have discovered

Thanks to a few friends at school, I have discovered the website http://www.stumbleupon.com/. It's a really cool website where you can type in your interest (some of mine are animals, photography, and travel among a lot of others), and then press the stumble button (you have to download the toolbar, unfortunately). Then just sit back and have hours of entertainment. And there are some pretty amazing websites out there that now I can just "Stumble Upon".