Update by Gwen

Hey everyone!  I have loved reading the other updates and figured that now was my turn.  I will just talk about my summer so far and some of my plans for the rest of it.  Hopefully all of you will be a part of that at Christmas Meadows this August!

On May 17 I turned sixteen, which was fun.  My mom threw a surprise party for me, which was funny because she asked me in advance if I wanted one, even thought that kind of ruins the point.  She was still able to surprise me, though, which just goes to show what a great planner she is!  That was really fun, and a great way to start of this next year of my life.

Probably the most fruitful and rewarding thing that I have been involved in this recently has been my new fascination with ice cream making.  We have a small ice cream maker, and I have busied myself with trying new flavors of ice cream from this great book I have.  It's called The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, and I highly recommend it.  I will even link to it here.  Of course, nothing beats strawberry ice cream made by Grandpa on the Fourth of July.  The most interesting flavors I have made so far have been lavender-honey and olive oil, which were delicious.  I am excited to make other unusual flavors like basil, parsley, goat cheese, roquefort-honey, and sweet potato with maple-glazed pecans.  I am especially excited about the basil one, and I just need our plants to grow a bit more before I will be able to harvest enough for the ice cream.  I figure that if I keep making ice cream, I will never be really lonely or want for friends, haha.  

 Some other things that I have done recently were getting my drivers license, which is nice and convenient, and starting a class at BYU for summer term, which started last Monday.  The class is called 2D Visual Design, and I like it a lot.  So far I have done two pieces, which are the following: 

This started as two negative space drawings that I did at the Monte L. Bean Life Science museum (or the "Dead Zoo;" I have heard it referred to both ways).  One was of some big-horned sheep, and the other was antlers.  I juxtaposed them on top of each other and did a contour line exercise in some of the shapes.  In this picture it isn't quite finished, but I have almost completed it now.  







This one is another negative space drawing of some chairs I stacked and put houseplants in.  I did values of india ink in the background.

Sorry for the horrible picture quality.

I am really excited to start working with color in this class, because as fun as india ink and micron pen are, color makes things so much more interesting.  I have also been doing a little bit of watercolor.







This most of my friends are far away for most of the summer (one in Japan, visiting her grandparents, and the other at Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan) or they have jobs, so it is really good that I have this class to keep me busy and out of trouble.  It's fun that I can drive to class now, too, even though parking by the HFAC can be a nightmare.  

Meri and I have also started sailing on Utah Lake with the Sea Scouts every Tuesday at six.  Last week my dad came too, but it was really boring because we were just putting patches on our shirts.  I never really would have envisioned myself joining Boy Scouts of America, but here I am.  Sailing is really fun, and I am excited to learn how to really do it myself.  In this picture, my friend (the other ponytail kid in the back), her older sister (the short one in yellow), and I are on the boat we sail on.  It is called the Carpe Diem, and as far as cheesy sailboat names go, it is way behind the rest that dock on Utah Lake (my personal favorite is "Unsinkable 2," which leaves one to wonder what happened to "Unsinkable 1"). Some of my friends have planned to charter a sailboat when we graduate from High School and sail around the San Juan Islands, where Orcas Island is.  Apparently the sailing there is exceptional.

Speaking of Orcas Island, our family is planning to go at the beginning of September.  I love the great memories I have of the trip we all went on there.  That was great, and I can't wait to go back.  


Well, Meri wants to play a computer game now and I have to go to the bank so I have to sign off, but I hope to hear about everyone else's summer plans!