Senior Year

With the culmination of our senior year, we decided to draw up a list of all the things we accomplished during our year at Loudoun County High School.
Starting in September, we:

1. Went to football games (1 football game. And left early. To go to McDonalds.)

2. Had trampoline talks consisting of the four girls lying on the trampoline wrapped in blankets, mimicking burritos, and wearing our mom’s best friend’s grandma’s socks that she knitted for us. This was also the time period where clown-sightings were frequent. The reason we never actually slept on our trampoline, was because, “Do you know how easy it would be for a clown to sneak underneath and kill us all?”

3. Went to a Drive In Movie: Mom bought a packable down blanket and said, “When you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere because your car won’t start, you can just pull out your packable down blanket and be so happy that you have a packable down blanket.” “Mom stop saying packable down blanket.” This exact scenario happened on the way home from the drive-in movie theater. We saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Featuring Eddie Redmayne and his fabulous cheekbones.

4. Did Tracy Anderson: Despite the fact that we all have ability to look pregnant at any time possible, the Tracy Anderson Post-Pregnancy Workout refutes the idea that the Post-Pregnant Woman would ever be able to do it. Although from the sounds occurring during the abb section, the idea of childbirth is not foreign to us.

5. Went to Homecoming.

6. Dressed as the Pink Ladies—an obsession born from watching Grease. 

7. Joined the swim team: “Can I get a hunyaaah!?!” This included nine meets with late-night IHOP. Because IHOP pancakes only taste good at two o’clock in the morning.

8. Got Athlete of the Month (Gwyneth).

9.Traversed a corn maze and braved roller skating.

10. Went to the emergency room for a fractured elbow (Gwyneth).

11. Hiked.

12. Rock Climbed.

13. Attended Stake Dances, regardless of the fact that our hard-and-fast rule is No Stake Dances. A rule implemented by our own selves. And broken against our will four times. That’s four times too many.

• A Mathletes vs. Athletes dance.
• A barn dance, where we disregarded the dancing bit in favor of huddling around a fire.
• A hawaiian dance, where we disregarded dancing again to play four intense games of foosball.
• A DC dance where we met Al Fox.

14. Had a Seminary Secret Santa exchange. We also convinced Mom to buy us Santa hats before our Winter prep rally. It was a wild ride as we sprinted from store to store trying to find suitable head coverings—coats, bought at the same time as our packable down blankets, flapping in the wind. Mom should never go shopping when she’s cold.

15. Were coerced into having a Seminary party by Mom. Our trampoline has never held such a burden. “How did it not collapse?” “Prayers of the righteous.”

16. Used two out of our fifteen Snow Days.

17. Were accepted into BYU!

18. Turned EIGHTEEN.

19. Went thrifting.

20. Got our driver’s licenses. And promptly, with driver’s licenses in hand, drove to Food Lion three times in the next twenty-four hours.

21. Attended many a bonfire.

22. Ate many a pancake at IHOP.

23. Brought our own cups to 7/11.

24. Lifeguarded. A lot.

25. Worked out. A lot.

26. Went to lacrosse games and basketball games.

27. Went to Harper’s Ferry (both at midnight and during the day).

28. Went to the beach. In Delaware.

29. Left our mark at LCHS.

30. Skipped school to go swimming.

31. Went to Prom.

32. Graduated from Seminary.

33. Ate so much food. Shoutout to Brie.

34. Went to Wilco.

35. Graduated!!!

Your Girls Graduated // Class of 2017

This morning, at seven o’clock, Gwyneth and I donned our polyester caps and gowns; caps and gowns that were promptly thrown off two hours later at the conclusion of our commencement ceremony—the cap in a victorious toss High School Musical style, and the gown in an attempt to alleviate heat stroke after sitting in 90 degree temperature for two hours.

But your girls graduated!
287 days ago we stepped onto the cultured grounds of Loudoun County High School and embarked on a one year journey through an American public high school. Having gone to every single school day, a shameful act properly given its due when “Leslie” Allen neglected to stand up during the “Excellence in Attendance” portion of the graduation, our mark on LCHS can be seen through two color-coordinating hand prints, two Varsity letters, and an appearance on the top ten percent list.

Gretchen and Madeline were stunned when they learned that they would not be attending our graduation.
“But it’s a pinnacle part of their lives!” Gretchen protested.
“I don’t even want to go,” Mom countered.
The feeling was mutual. We were sorely tempted to walk down the ramp and continue right on walking to the parking lot.
“It’s just a straight shot to certain freedom,” I implored to Mom. She was tempted as well. Nevertheless we lasted through the whole ceremony with zero fleeing attempts.

Wells was a big fan of our caps and gowns. More so than anyone ever should be.

We forwent the stereotypical leis and flowers and opted for succulents.

Our little kindergarden graduate!

The last four years were nothing like High School Musical.

In Which We Drove Our Grandpa Crazy

In lieu of Gwyneth and I passing our drivers tests (the first time!) I give you: In Which We Drove Our Grandpa Crazy.

A couple of weeks ago Grandmaandgrandpaorvapaul came out to visit us for a while. We were very excited. Little did we know what a wild ride we were in for – and chock-full of puns it was.

Some background information: Our grandpa happens to be an excellent driver.

Gwyneth and I do not happen to be excellent drivers.

He taught my mom and all eight of her siblings how to drive stick and automatic – after we laughed in his face when he offered to sell us a truck that was stickshift – he endeavored to at least teach us automatic.

That night he got first-hand experience of what driving with me feels like as I drove an hour and a half at night in rain and snow, muttering encouragement to myself and singing along to BYU Vocal Point’s Christmas album.

It was a long, prayer-filled ninety minutes.

Enlightened to the extent of my driving skills, Grandpa started to highlight the finer points.

As merging is the bane of my existence, he decided that would be our goal. And merge we did!

Accompanied by our trusty blue minivan, piles of food, bottles of water, and the prayers of the righteous, we set off.

(In hindsight the water was problematic.)

During the hours between seminary and school, and school and work, anyone watching the traffic cameras would have seen a blue minivan puttering it’s way up the on-ramp with shotgun and backseat drivers gleefully popping in handfuls of chips and yelling, “Step on it!” At which point the blue minivan would pathetically oblige and go approximately two miles faster. Rather than two gear shifts faster.

Other times you might see the blue minivan sputter to a halt, flip a U-turn, and then repeat that process three more times until it was 8:45am, at which point it would jauntily make its way to school.

In which Grandpa would drop us off with a parting call of, “No flunkage!” and zoom off, to show that under his control, the car could respond to such simple commands as, “Step on it!”

As well as his driving skills, we also took advantage of his culinary talent. We ate really well for those two weeks (vegan meatloaf, vegan stuffed shells, and vegan lasagna). This required many trips to the grocery store. AKA many drives to the grocery store. One of these trips occurred after a swim practice. With sopping wet hair and slides with socks, we marched into the store, intent only on buying mushrooms.

We walked out with the ‘shrooms and bottles of Sangria (Mexican soda).

We deemed that the only “open bottles” one could have whilst driving were those of hot sauce or Sangria.

As well as grocery stores we also drove to Home Depot and around Old Town Leesburg. It was on the back roads of the latter that we got to hear Grandpa’s abundance of cemetery puns, brought on by a cemetery sighting, and I had the chance to switch to second and then first gear as we sped down a hill. It was a grave situation.

Grandpa also took the opportunity to make Gwyneth park the car, so he could get out and chase/investigate some birds.

I’m sure Grandpa also appreciated the One Direction album that I consistently and constantly played every time it was my time to drive. Bouncing to the beat and bashing my knees against the steering wheel. I’m that short.

It says something that I can switch songs and change the volume better than I can turn on my windshield wipers.

I’m sure he also appreciated that anytime anything obstructed my windshield I yelled, “Distracted driving!” This was a tad inconvenient when it was raining or when there was bunches of wayward leaves.

An Ode to the Last Day of School

Okay, this is not really an ode because according to my english teacher an ode is a “name given to an extended lyric poem characterized by exalted emotion and dignified style. An ode usually concerns a single, serious theme.” and something we did not need to know on our exam. I digress.

The last day of school, though it be a half day, may be the longest day ever. Maybe something a little High School Musical-esque can occur with the simultaneous chanting by the student body of “Summer, summer, summer.” I live my Last Day of School vicariously through HSM 2.

I have been looking forward to this day since the first day of school.

I do not think I have ever been more ready for summer. Regardless of the fact that there will be no temperature change.

I don’t know if it’s the end of school that I’m looking forward to, maybe it’s because we’re done with exams? But summer better be dang amazing.

These were our celebration juices.

“Who cares if I’m pretty if I fail my finals?”

Wise words spoken by one Rory Gilmore. I don’t know if I can make it through this next week. We have final exams Monday through Thursday and Friday feels so far away. All I ask for is that I don’t hand in my exam with tear stains on it. I have very low standards.

To show you how far I’ve fallen let me take you to our last math class of the semester. We had just come from watching High School Musical in choir (it has singing so it was totally applicable to the class) and so it was a hard fall when we walked into math and had to actually work. It was a rough class for me. We basically worked by ourselves reviewing everything that we learned this semester. I started chronologically. I got stuck on functions – the very first unit.

I basically cried my way through the first couple of questions until I got to the point where I was convinced that the answer key was wrong not me! Fast forward past the part where I adamantly refused to believe I was wrong (Plot twist: Anything divided by zero is undefined. Don’t judge me. Math is not my forte.) My friends laughed at me for a solid minute. “I’ve reached my limit” I groaned as I basically hid under the table. “Liesel can’t function anymore,” my table relayed to the class. “This is a graph of Liesel’s sanity. As you can see it has exponentially decreased.” Then the table behind us joined in with, “You’re the x to my y” and “Without you my life is irrational”. I was not amused. Those are totally irrelevant puns and have nothing to do with my woe.