Thursday, June 21, 2012

Austin getting creeped on by MJ

Oh man, I think this is pretty funny :) I saw this picture of a friend of mine and couldn't help but slap on a picture of Michael Jackson in the background. Enjoy :)

Summer... so far...

So after what seemed an eternity, school finally ended and in came summer. To be completely honest, it still hasn't quite hit me yet. Usually I go bonkers with the freedom that summer brings, but this time it's just felt empty and kind of insignificant. Probably because i've only been home for like a week of it. I've been gone to a couple different camps and have been pretty busy.... I don't know, hopefully summer will find a way into my system soon.

So I spent the first week of my summer up at Weber State for Boys' State. Boys' State is a program run by the American Legion. It's basically a weeklong meeting where you learn about leadership and how the government works. You go through mock elections and get to see how government works at the city, county, state, and national level. It's fun for the first couple of days, but by Friday you kind of feel like you're scraping your head against a cheese grater. It was really long and tiring, but I met a lot of really cool guys up there. My roommates were really great guys, and it was fun getting to spend some time with them. There were four guys in my room, and when we discovered we were all LDS, we spent every night reading scriptures together, discussing doctrine, and  we would pray together. That was really cool, and I never would have expected to grow spiritually while up at Boys' State, but I did. So that was a pleasant surprise. Boys' State is run by a lot of Veterans, and one of my favorite parts of Boys' State was hearing from them. They are amazing men, and it is inspiring to be around them. Anyways, It was kind of a weird week.... but there were some memorable times.

When I got back from that, I got to spend two days at home before I went to Impact camp. At the end of the school year I signed up to be on Viewmont's Impact Team. The Impact Team goes around to elementary and junior high schools, putting on skits telling kids why not to do drugs, drink alcohol, smoke, and other stuff like that. So for two day's in the summer the kids on the Impact Team go to a workshop where they "train" us. "Training" is spending two days making one 5 minute skit, eating, sleeping, and wandering the Utah State campus. It was pretty boring... Luckily some of my friends were there, so I didn't die of boredom. Oh and there were teams from other schools there..... except they aren't like us, and by "us" I mean normal people. These other kids are INSANE. They take everything so serious and are about as dramatic as they come. For part of our "Training" we had to practice fake crying, being sad, and going into rage. These kids from other schools (especially Woods Cross) got way to into it, and kind of went berserk. Kids were pounding on the walls, screaming, ripping their hair out and just going crazy. Meanwhile, I'm trying to hide my face so that people can't see how hard I'm laughing. It is really pretty entertaining to watch some of these kids, but the leaders don't think it's so funny, so I had to be very careful. If they see you laughing they get mad at you for "Not taking it seriously." It was weird...... funny, but weird. You could say I was excited to get home.

I got home from Impact camp like a week ago, and not much has happened since. I've just been working around the house, running like 3 miles a day trying to get in shape for cross country, learning how to unicycle, and listening to a lot of music. Anyways that's been my summer so far.... I'm kind of hoping it won't be like this all summer or I might go crazy.

-LB