Ug...

Sigh, today I started choir at Hidden Valley again.

I went in and was greeted by the friends that I had made from last year: Mikaela, Jeremy, Ashley, and Sam. That was nice to see them again, but it was not so pleasant to see some of the other young men in the group...

The whole experience was probably the most unproductive thing I have done all school year. All I did was casually review for a unit test, listen to (lame 80's) music that Mr. Lawson was playing (he was expecting us to learn simply by listening to the recording of it), and listen to the foulest and most obscene language and jokes I have heard all year. It was a very sick and degrading experience. Not as much as how others acted, however, but more of how I acted in the situation. This time I decided to lay-low, you know. Just be the quiet good example who just sits in his chair and studies. I remember last year when I was a bit of a "policeman" concerning the language of the group. Now I feel more tolerant, and it makes me feel weak. Should I stand up and tell people to shush up? I don't know if it is my place to do that. Well, it is my job to "stand as a witness of God in all things and times and places", right? I think I just need to boost my courage.

But then again, I don't even want to go back. The music we are singing is STILL too easy (and no fun, btw), and it's not very nice to swim in a sess pool. I know, I know, I should learn how to deal with poopy people (and not let their abnoxia affect my mood), but shouldn't one surround himself with high-class people to become high-class? Ug, I'm confused.

To make matters even more complicated, Mikaela is excited to sing a duet with me. She's been thinking of doing one for awhile, but now I simply want to leave. How do I bail out of this situation without hurting her feelings? Ugg...

I feel trapped.

Home again. :)

Ah, finally back home. Today was a good day.

Uncle Nate is a real great man. When he was young, he wanted to grow up to be a cowboy. That's pretty much what he is, except right now he's the recreation department manager for Tilamook Forest. He hopes to own his own ranch someday... Anyways, today he and dad went on some trails on a quad and a motorcycle. I think they had a good time doing that. HA, Nate has a GPS who has Mr. T's voice. "Turn left, fool!"

All day we've been working on the house and yard for our special guests to arrive tomorrow. I'm so excited for the Baxter family to come and visit our home!

Gretel's baptism was very good. I sung If The Savior Stood Beside Me and Sabrina did a talk about the Holy Ghost. Aunt Sandra (Nate's totally GOREGOUS wife) gave a talk about baptism also. As we waited for my dad and Gretel to change after the sacred ordinance was performed, we watched a slideshow of the pictures in Reflections of Christ. It made me cry! I love my Savior so much.

Phew, big week coming up; Swing choir starts up again this week! Oh boy; I hope I'll be able to stick to me plans and get everything done. "(falsetto) I can go the distance..."

Thanksgiving info

Well, for the past few days I've been living at my grandparent's/cousin's house. As usual, we've enjoyed our leisure, feasting, and service so far. Right now everyone's stuck on a movie, so I thought I'd just blog while they were busy with that.

It was the typical family Thanksgiving gathering yesterday, including the sugarfree pies, board games, and random family that somebody always invites. This year it was the Philips; the young men president's family. They have two teenage daughters and two (I think) little dudes.

Of course, Calvin designed a fantastic Heroscape board for us to play on that night. This time we let some of the younger kids participate, and even after us older guys were done the youngsters continued to fight in the battle between vikings/army men/aliens/FBI agents/dragons/knights/robots... We tend to think up crazy little stories and names for all of the figures as we go along just to make it more interesting. When Anthony's cleverness ensues, the whole game turns not only into an interesting war game but a standup comedy show. All of my Jarvis cousins have that sort of aura about them more or less; it must've been a talent they were working on in the pre-mortal existence.

 Sigh, just hanging out. That's what my Thanksgiving is about.

Bwahaha, Thanksgiving Break Begins

Sigh.

I love life. I have been so happy lately. "I love the gospel." I randomly shouted this at grandma's house the other day. In her surprise, grandma replied, "I love the gospel too!"
Let me tell you what I was doing over there anyways.

Grandpa Seable had taken me to the YMCA yesterday morning to workout (my dad had some kind of time-consuming task that afternoon that would leave him no time to take me). Afterwards, he decided to kidnap me to get some work done over at the family gathering place. My grandparent's primary house is meshed with my Jarvis cousin family's house. It's basically just one really big house. We always celebrate Thanksgiving there as a family, and we always tend to have a simply splended time. Even that one time when all of the tables full of food collapsed at random, we still had a grand holiday.

Grandpa wanted my help in moving and organizing stuff up in his big workshop on the... hm, let me guess... 4 acres? Maybe 2. I dunno; I'll have to ask. Nice, big, thick-forest-y property. Before we got to work on that, however, we ate a good, hearty, healthy lunch. After doing that, grandpa took a nap and I got some schoolwork done on their computer. Didn't do to well though without my books and notes; I regret taking that one Biology test. Eventually, we got up to the shop and got some of the clutter cleared out. The interior of grandpa's shop is just fascinating to me. There's tools, clay, wood, and unfinished projects just piled all over the place. On the walls and shelves old masterpieces stood and hung on display. Muscular humanoid scuptures, beautiful salmon paintings, ballet partners frozen in the middle of an impressive throw, and even an intricate sculpture of a fetus are found within in the cold, massive shack. We didn't get as much done as grandpa hoped before I had to get back (to prepare for mom's return), but we sure had a good time. I talked (of course) about his career choice.

I chatted with him about a lot of people I had already talked to, and as I let my thoughts go from my mind to my mouth, I began to see a trend. Many of my overachieving, spiritually strong, and wealthy role models (Uncle Reg, Uncle Mark, Uncle Dion, and Brother Preston Baxter) all have one thing in common: They are all engineers of a sort. Reg is an irrigation engineer. At least from what I know, he designs waterways and such for the city of Windsor, CA. Uncle Mark is an electrical engineer. I haven't directly asked him exactly what he does yet though; I had better do that soon. Uncle Dion is an airplane engine engineer and has never really had financial problems at all. He and his family lived a part of their life in Singapore; a wonderous, amazing place from what I've heard about it. Brother Baxter is one of my best friend's dad, and told me that his day to day work is designing bridges. These men live lives of high prosperity, diligence, intelligence, and faith; they are helping me in my attempt to seek my vision through their examples.

Okay, I need to let this out: I LOVE MY MATH TEACHER! Today Mrs. Howard called me and we discussed my math work sample (after all of this time). She told me that I did well and only needed to talk to her about it; the score after the phone call changed from 0/6 to 7/6! Now my math grade is back to normal, and I feel goo-ood.

Oh, grandma let me borrow a book (hahaha, ANOTHER borrowed book. Let's see... this is borrowed book #8, I think? How am I ever going to get any of these read?? Ha, that's what vacation is for, I guess). The book she let me borrow is called Think Indepenently by Chauncey C. Riddle. I am very excited to get deep into this book. This amazing scholar has his MA and PhD degrees in philosophy AND is LDS. The gospel+philosophy=SWEETNESS. Once I learn how to start thinking right, I'll be UNSTOPPABLE. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~!

Sigh, I love philosophy. I guess that's what I've really been studying lately; not psych. That sort of thing has to do with the technical parts of the brain and whatnot, which is another branch of science. Philosophy, as Riddle defines it in his book, is "...asking and answering fundamental questions which cannot be resolved by scientific or mathematical means."

I am feeling so good right now. This Thanksgiving is going to ROCK.

The past few days

Ha, the blog has been neglected all week! Well, all last week was the same ol' school-seminary-family duties soft of a week. Mom left us on Friday. That's right, she just got on a plane and left. She'd had enough! No, okay, I'm sorry, jk. She went to Arizona for the weekend with Faidra for our cousin's wedding reception! Uncle Dion (Mr. Awesome-Rich-Board Game-Plane Engineer-Dude) was very happy to see his little sister again I am sure. I feel really lame for not knowing the name of cousin Tara's newlywed husband, I'll ask mom for it when she gets back. She should be home sometime today, I think. I remember going to Quinn's wedding reception (he's Tara's older brother by a few years). It was awesome! His wife Clare is just the essence of bubby-ness. Know what I mean? Just a real sweet, friendly, and pretty young lady. They are such a cute couple!

Well, last Saturday dad had come up with a new random job for us to do from Craigslist: Fell a tree and chop it up for $100. And so that was just what we did. It was fun, but dad got a bit scared being way up in that tree with a chainsaw chopping off huge limbs. We couldn't just chop down the tree from the trunk; we had to chop it piece by piece so that the tree wouldn't fall on somebody's house or on powerlines or a car or something terribly unfortunate such as that. We ALMOST broke a power line, but thankfully that one branch just bounced off instead of snapping it...

Ah, Sunday was another spiritually rejuvenating experience. Our ward choir always practices right before sacrament meeting; right when I'm helping prepare the sacrament. Well, today the choir was to perform twice, and so I decided to just come up and help out the (small) choir after passing the sacrament without practicing the parts at all. Fa, Truly and Carmen were in the choir today as well, but they dissappeared after the choir's performance. I wondered why, but I was informed by Sis. Wright that Fa was ill but wanted to help with the bells in the choir. They left early so as to avoid getting others sick. Oh! I got to "interview" two guys about their jobs that day. I talked to my Sunday school teacher Bro. Stewart about his job.  It was some kind of commercial work involving finance, if I remember correctly.

Bro. Stewart: "Huh, well, do you like math?"

Keenan: "I'm learning how to like math..."

The other guy I talked to was my ride home: Bro. Davis. I knew that he did some kind of construction work, but I learned specifically that he pours concrete to pay the bills. But what I DIDN'T know was that he is an inventor. He was explaining the use of this new tool that he designed for pulling stakes out of the ground. That was a lot of fun, and I also got to ask him about the complications involved about getting a product like that on the market. He said that manufacturing was easy, but the trickier part was to get a patient. It was very interesting stuff to me.

Tonight was a Stake standard's night, which was AWESOME. I wonder how these sort of things are for other Stakes, because these firesides of ours always tend to be off-the-wall. The Johnsons sung a song before their talk about the word of wisdom. The tune was dulcent and dainty, but when Sis. Johnson started to sing I really felt like slapping my head. She didn't seem to know the song very well anyways. I had never heard it before, and, if I remember correctly, it started out something like, "this is a little (voice breaks awkwardly) song, to help you go along..." It was very very corny. I could tell everyone else in that congregation was suffering even as I, until the song started to REALLY get goofy. The song actually was a joke, and it used very cheesy rhyming while singing about the word of wisdom. "Just drink coco... hot drinks make you feel so-so..." Oh my word, I can't even remember the song completely, but the youth were just bawling with laughter by the time it was over. And of course, as always, we all felt the spirit while learning too. Let's see, what rocks have I allowed myself to carry along in this life...

I got to talk to all of my buddies from the Stake that night! Well, most of them. Jared looks like he got a haircut, but he says that he didn't get one. I dunno, his curly hair looked pretty cool that day, I dunno. Maybe it was the color he was wearing. I talked to Austin (Savannah's older brother) to ask how Savannah was doing, and he said that the operation went well. She'll be able to be home in 5 days or so. Austin is awesome; just like his sister! It must be something that runs in the family. Cousin Anthony and I chatted about Thanksgiving weekend and our movie ideas. Anth is pretty excited to meet Ceana and her family this coming Sunday. He thought up a pretty good start for our movie too. I've been thinking up characters to put into the movie this week. AH, we've got a good weekend full of brainstorming and interdependent thinking coming up, on top of the vast amounts of food, family, friends, and fun. I just got to get through a few more days of solid work before the end of the tunnel is here...

WARM FUZZYNESS

Oh man, yesterday I was attacked by a giant, mutant, warm fuzzy from behind: the biggest surprise that was ever pulled on me was executed yesterday by evil masterminds.

I awoke that morning real tired-feeling; last night I stayed up especially late. I wanted the house to be clean for when the Baxter family would come over. I had suggested to them a couple of times to stop by on their way to California for a huge Thanksgiving vacation. I was hoping that they would, but nobody ever replied a "yes" or a "no", and so I was starting to feel a bit ignored. Little did I know...

Mom was busy that night finding clothes that would go nicely together for our family photos that we would be taking tomorrow. She said that we were getting them in Medford; I assumed that we would be getting them from JC Penny as we usually get our pictures. I remember grumbling, "mom, we should just get Sis. Baxter to do the family photos..."

My gullible-ness was proven to be severe when I didn't even suspect anything when mom said, "Hey Keenan, why don't you bring your guitar?"

As we drove I just toyed around with the guitar, not really being in the real world. After awhile I realized that we were driving in the suburbs of Central Point. My lack of suspicion stroke again: "Hm, that's weird. Mom's taking a different route to the mall today..."

We stopped. I looked around, and noticed the name of a nearby mailbox: Holmbeck. I realized that we were at Allie's house! I said to mom, "Hey look! It's Allie's house!" She just stared at me for the longest time. After many seconds, I started to understand what was going on.

When we went inside, I fould Cassidy inside as well! And so we chatted lightly about school assigments and whatnot. I noticed parents saying things like, "they just said they'll be here in a few minutes." Then it all clicked. Finally.

When Sis. Baxter came through the doors, she quietly said, "Hush hush, Ceana doesn't know! Come out when I tell you."

Amazing. At this point after seeing Ceana exclaiming wildly in surprise, I was mentally spazzing out at the genius of Sis. Baxter. One of the coolest moms ever, I must say. And so, we got our family photos taken, had brunch, and then decided to go to the mall. Gretel still had to have her baptism pictures taken there, you see. We had a good time there just milling around. It was such a treat to be in the midst of such dear friends. I got to hear Kaeli's British accent that day which, I must say, was pretty darn good an' natural sounding. I think she would be able to decieve others into believing she was from Europe if she tried.

It was SO good to see everybody again. That little get together was such a good social refuel for me.

Grandma and grandpa visited us last night. They gave us the newest scoop about Uncle Tom's new movie. They now have enough money to get it published! We also talked more about careers. Grandpa's story is just fascinating. In his youth he got into an accident that sent a tremendous amount of electricity through his body and left huge scars on his legs that are still there today. He should've been dead, but God has given him 60+ years to live. Though it was predicted that he would not recover, he was still able to serve a full time mission (at age 25), have 8 children, and a ton of other things the doctors said he would not be able to do. I love grandpa; his life is very inspiring to me.
Tonight for mutual the young men played wallyball at Club Northwest. We had an awesome time! It was like volleyball, only in a big white room. I LOVED IT. I think everyone else enjoyed it too. Henry came along, and he really liked participating with the older boys. Good ol' Henry.

Wow, blessings galore.

Today was a fantastic start of the week! I started strong in getting more schoolwork done in one day than I have for a long time (still trying to catch up all of that Latin!), and I have also felt very lifted in other ways too.

Okay, to whoever will read this, I beg you to focus on this more than anything else: SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT. This is essential, especially for the day and age in which we live in. Have a REAL personal study, go to seminary, read/listen to general conference. Never miss an opportunity to feel the spirit strongly. We, as mortals, forget easily. The more you are reminded by the Holy Ghost the better.

Tonight we had a good time at FHE. The lesson tonight was about Baptism; we're excited for Gretel to be baptized next week. Afterwards I played some music and the kids danced. Henry got rolling once I started playing "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins on guitar. He started singing this rediculous parody that was something like, "Oh, my mom was an ape... she'll be in my heart..." Eventually I was laughing too hard to hold the strings down hard enough and I stopped playing. But he kept going, and eventually the melody turned into the Diego Theme Song and a zombie Tarzan teamed up with Diego and he went on and on like he often does. It seemed funny to me that he used the Diego song; that song has been my background music all day long!

I have this wild fantasy in my head that the Baxter family will stop at our house for a rest stop tomorrow on their vacation, but they haven't gotten back to me about it. :/ Hm... It would've been the first full-family get together. I can only imagine what might've happened: Henry throwing toy grenades and hyping up Caiden and Colton with his seemingly ENDLESS arsenal of weapons (he keeps "borrowing" them from all his homies), the little girls running around all over the place, and the older kids and parents attempting to have a decent conversation over it all... It'd be an encounter worth writing about.