7-9-3, I'm talkin' 'bout H-S-B...

This bright red tree in our front yard

Me, BreAnn Walker (her grandpa and Jeremy’s dad are brothers) and our pumpkin

Dear Fam,

Here’s the update (emphasis on DATE):

SCHOOL: Am I just making this up, or did one of you tell me senior year would be easy? One of you lied! This year’s workload has, without any exaggeration, been the five times more trouble than any other year of school I’ve ever had. I don’t know if its just because I have a small procrastination problem or if I was just taking easy classes for the last eleven years of school, but I’ve for sure never had so much homework, never had such trouble with classes and never been stressed out more in my life! Man! Anyways, I’m pretty chill about it normally and I’m sure its great preparation for college…

FOOTBALL: We’re almost done! Two more games and then a short two-week break before basketball! I’m really pumped. As much as I’ve enjoyed playing so much in the games and tackling people and all of the fun stuff, I am very ready for football to be over and to move on to the next sport.

CHURCH: Well, church is great! How I love having one day where I’m not even allowed to do homework! In a month our branch will have NINE priests and one teacher. Crazy, huh? Man, our quorum is so cool! I cannot wait until we all start going on missions, it will just be AWESOME.

Anyways, I think that’s it. I attached my essays for my BYU application to the email, and I’d really appreciate any input anyone had before I send them in (probably Wednesday).

Keep it real everyone,

D Rawk

Pretty impressive, huh?

How ya been Nigel? Weird.

Hey Fam,
Hey, this is just going to be a regular weekly post, but if anyone wants to read about BYS or Brian Regan, I'll just send that in a separate email.

Monday I woke up late, so wasn't able to shower, pack a lunch or even get much water before I had to go to work. Work was good, the first really hot day for me I think, so hot in fact that I ran out of water about halfway through the day. The guy I was working with was nice though, so he bought me a nice, cool caffeinated beverage that I quickly drained (haha, just kidding. I actually dumped small amounts of it into his drink every time he wasn't around and drank delicious gas station water instead). That night Mom and Dad came home late.

Tuesday I got up early to go to Twin Falls with Jake Flake, which was fine, then home to welcome Cassidy back! Sweet! I was so glad to get my little sister back! That night we had blow-by-blows for Cassidy's California experience and then Dillon's and mines EFY reports. Pretty fun.

Wednesday I worked with Uncle Brad in Emmett.

Thursday I worked with Dustin in Boise and Dillon, Cassidy, Whitney and I all slept on the trampoline.

Friday I woke up on the trampoline around eight as the sun started to get really bright. Sleeping on the trampoline is loads of fun, but not really very resting. None of us slept very well except for maybe Cassidy, who probably would have slept another hour had Dad not turned the sprinklers on… Anyways, Whitter and I left to go pick up our dates around 11:30, her’s in Emmett (Nigel Youngberg) and mine in Boise (Carissa Jones. She's a real cool girl who was in mine and Whitney's group at last year’s BYS) and then we hit a couple other places (Wal-Mart and Whitney’s old apartment) before we made it to the river. It was AWESOME, tons of people obviously but still a whole lot of fun though things did get a little hairy at the end. You see Whitney and I are both retarded, so we didn’t figure we’d need paddles, which of course turned out to be a problem when we weren’t able to move the boat out of the way of this fallen tree near Ann Morrison Park. It was pretty terrifying actually, the log gashed a whole in the boat, air and water was spraying in mine and Carissa’s faces, then we were all dumped out when the raft snagged on the tree, except Whitney who got caught in these ropes and couldn’t seem to manage to get her head up for something like thirty seconds, fifteen of which the rest of us were freaking out trying to swim upstream and untangle her… It was a bad situation, and I’m glad we’ve learned our lesson. Anyways, from there we walked back to Whitney’s old apartment where we waited for some of the others to get back before we headed over to the Gemtek Barbecue. Pretty fun, good food, football, all that fun stuff. I was just glad that Carissa’s BYS counselor from this year was one of the technicians’ girlfriends; it might’ve been REAL boring for her otherwise. After that was the Boise Hawks game, which was pretty fun, then I took her home (she had to be back at nine), hanged out with her family for a little while and then went back to the game to watch Boise win and FIREWORKS!! Haha, I love the 4^th of July…

Saturday I had off, so I did some chores, watched Sarah’s kids a little, and later that night went over to Nic’s house with Cassidy to hang out. Pretty fun.

Well I guess that’s it for now.
Keep it real,

Derek

Summerific

one, two, three, I'm talkin' bout ACT...

Composite Score: 28
Post-ACT Analysis: WHOA! AWESOME! I have really been blessed (because, as we all know, I'm not in the top ten smartest of the family), though I promised myself I'd take it again if I didn't get a 30, so I better start hitting the books again... Love you all,
D Rompus

Date 3: Plan C

Well this Friday made up for the rest of the lousy week.

After trying all week to find a who was free Friday between 4 and 10, I finally found one Thursday night while I was at Joel's house watching the BYU/TCU game. Her name is Alana Brown, and I guess the only place I really knew her from was the Emmet dances. Anyway, right after school on Friday I drove over to Emmet High School and picked her up and then drove back to Horseshoe Bend chapel. Without the radio on. Crazy, I know, but I was pleasantly surprised when we didn't run out of stuff to talk about. Anyways, once we got to the church, we (Michelle, Zack G., his date, Joel, Melanie, Brother Moses, Alana and I (Jake and Josh showed up later)) all piled into the s' cars and drove up through the gorgeous and untamed Idaho wilderness to the Moses' ranch in Dry Buck. Its a really cool little place, its got a little house, barn, couple of sheds and this little playground that Melanie and our dates played on while Joel built his "man" fire, Brother Moses looked for the other horses and Zack and I played cowboys. For a couple of city boys, I think we did pretty good; we managed to get seven horses tied up and saddled without getting our brains bucked out and, contrary to what you might've heard, Brother Moses didn't have to fix every saddle that I'd done. Also contrary to what you might've heard, Zack and I were the first to volunteer to double with our dates when there weren't enough horses.
Anyway, after we'd saddled them and Melanie had given those who needed it a brief horse-handling lesson, the nine of us on the seven horses and Josh Black on the four wheeler set out for a sweet ride around the Moses ranch and then back to Joel's "man" fire for hotdogs and smores. A little cold, but otherwise very awesome. After that, Alana and I rode with Joel and Melanie back down to the church, and then I took her home, talked with her parents a little, said goodnight and then somehow managed to get from Letha to our subdivision without getting lost. So awesome. Easily the most fun I've had this month. I guess third time's a charm, huh?

Rite of Passage - SO HOT!

Derek went to Provo to hang out with his buddy, film a movie, attend an awesome BYU game and drive home with us (Austin, Heather and Luke). On the way home, we stopped at Costa Vida (a rip off of Cafe Rio) to get food to start our fast. Derek had never been there, of course, and didn't want a delicious salad like Heather was having (he doesn't like lettuce...hmm) so he got what Austin was having - a smothered Pork burrito with medium sauce. Everything would have been fine but Derek is more of a...mild sauce person. He wasn't quite ready to handle the spiciness of the medium sauce. His face turned bright red, his eyes were tearing up, he drank 5 glasses of water and couldn't finish the burrito. He kept putting the water straw on his lips to cool them down because they were burning! It was pretty funny. I'm sure a few years down the road he'll be ordering the spiciest thing on the menu and it won't faze him at all. This was merely a rite of passage for our little Derek. He handled it pretty well, although some tears were shed.