To Kiss a Frog: March 2014

Another year gone by.... well almost. I have about a term left of this school year. I have about a term left of high school. I have about a term, just over two short months, until my friends start leaving on missions and busily preparing to separate to college. May I just say.. that is so weird. Suddenly time seems like the weirdest concept. We're taught all our lives that time is a constant. That an hour, a month, and a decade are always and will always be the same length... but I swear that there is something else determining the timing of things. This year has gone by so quickly. Too quickly. I honestly don't know where it's gone. It seems only yesterday I was starting my sophomore year, turning sixteen, and going on my first date. It seems that the people who are coming home from their missions this month left only a few months ago. I hardly feel like I can be a senior in high school, yet my senior year is almost over. I'm eighteen years old. I'm about to graduate. (hopefully :). I'm about to go to BYU with no mommy to guide everything I do. I'm planning to serve a mission for the LDS church in less than a year. Suddenly the thoughts I once had about wanting to be independent, about wanting to move out, about wanting to determine for myself my curfew and how much I could spend- are lost in a sudden wish that I could stay in my mommy's care forever. It's scary. Suddenly I'm realizing that moving out, going to college and leaving for a mission is scarier than I thought. It takes more effort to support yourself than just "spending money the way you want". Suddenly you have to earn that money for yourself. You no longer get to ask mom and dad for favors and request an extra addition to this months allowance... there is no allowance, and the favorable sum of money mom and dad may have given before is suddenly less. Much less. You're expected to fend for yourself and learn how to function like an adult. Sure I always wanted to turn 18. I always wanted to gain the respect and the privileges that came with it. But I didn't want the responsibilities that being an adult would require. Somehow I must have thought that I could reap the rewards of both sides. Of being out of my parent's home but gaining everything I could from my parent's home. I guess growing up doesn't work exactly the way I thought.
I guess all the thoughts I had of "grown ups" weren't quite right. School has always been my only stress. I must have assumed that once I graduated my life would be perfect. I always wanted to graduate, go to BYU, and get married by the time I was twenty with a couple perfect children by the time I was twenty-five. I assumed my growing would end when I was a "grown up". I assumed I'd be done with my troubles and sail through the rest of life when I hit that point. Little did I know that all of my life before that point would just be a preface for the real world. What I thought would be the end of my trials was simply preparing me for the trials I would face.
When I was a kid I thought I'd be grown up by the age of twelve. When I was twelve I thought I'd be grown up by sixteen. When I was sixteen I was sure I'd finally grow up when I turned eighteen- when I finally reached adulthood. But I'm still not grown up and I still don't feel like an adult. Maybe that's how all of life is. We always look up. There's always someone older and wiser than us. There's always some reason to think "if I could just be as old as them. Then I'd finally be grown up. Then I might finally know exactly what I'm doing." Maybe we're never totally grown up. I guess that is what life's for. If we finished growing up by the age of eighteen years old why would we need to keep living? If we've done all the growing we can in just eighteen short years, what's the point? Maybe that's why there's always someone older and wiser than us. We're always growing up. Whether in years or wisdom there's always someone who's more grown. That's the reason for life. That's the reason we don't finish growing at eighteen. Because without the constant growing there'd really be no reason to keep living. So I'm getting ready to graduate. I'm getting ready to move out and go out on my own. I'm getting ready to be a grown up, just not really.

So the last few months I've spent planning the annual 5th FCCLA fashion show.I planned it last year and killed myself... so why I was so eager to do so again this year I have no idea. It was exhausting. It was terrible. I don't know why exactly, but I loved it. It made me put off my grades and online classes that are now in desperate need of my attention before I can graduate. It made me give up going to lunch so I could have meetings with our officer and Mrs. Armstrong and it made me give up hanging out some nights so I could paint ticket booths, string flowers, and call vendors. I killed myself in order to make this night a success. One day Angela Brown (BHS's drama teacher) asked if we even made anything from this... what was the point in spending so much time and effort? And sometimes I did wonder why I bothered. Last year we made 900 something dollars... a nice sum, but not worth months of work, in my opinion. Sometimes I felt like all the hours we put into the show could make much more money for Primary Children's if we'd spend them at a job and donate our earnings straight to the hospital. It sometimes seemed like a more logical method of donation, and it sometimes seemed LOTS easier. But even though sometimes I wanted to cry from all the stress, and sometimes I wished I could put someone else in charge, I never once really wanted to stop. I thought how nice it would be to cancel the show or let someone else take charge. Two weeks before the show Mrs. Armstrong even offered that we could cancel the show. We had nothing. About five vendors total for clothing, food, giveaways, and silent auction. Certainly not enough to raise enough money to make our efforts worth anything. But I had put so much work into this show, and honestly I loved doing it. So I told Armstrong I wouldn't cancel the show. We toyed with the idea of postponing the show a week or two, but after looking at our options we realized we'd have to do it on the same day as we'd planned. We may not have many vendors, but we'd just have to do our best to pull as much as we could from the community in our two short weeks. Well the next day we missed some classes. I and the officers missed any class we could to make phone calls, drive to stores, and bring letters of information to anyone in Bountiful who would listen to our cause. The day before we had four clothing vendors- Banana Republic, Fashion Corner, Down East, and Mr. Mac. Our only formal dress vendor had canceled and all the others in the area had said no. We had small donations from just a few stores in Bountiful and only one basket donated by Top Hat for our Silent Auction. By the end of that day we had a definite answer that Rue 21, Uptown Cheapskate, Plato's Closet, and 5th Avenue Tuxedos would allow us to model their clothing. We received gift cards and free meal coupons from more than ten places in Bountiful. Costco would donate Hot Dogs and Churros, Parson's Bakery committed to donated donuts and cookies, and Mrs. Wray would allow us to use her cotton candy machine for our concessions. We had a few stores commit to make baskets for our silent auction, and others that would consider our offer. Within a few days Gateway Bridal & Prom, Dreams of Enchantment and our Bountiful Brave Wear also said we could model some clothing in the fashion show. Our previous problems of not enough clothing stores were replaced with a new issue of not having nearly enough models to wear all of the clothing we now had. We also had student clothing businesses who wanted their clothing modeled. We had more than a dozen different businesses to provide models and fitting times for in less than two weeks. We also got Krispy Kreme doughnuts to donate 5 dozen doughnuts, and Michelle McGuire offer to make cinnamon rolls. The day before the show we learned that Paradise Bakery would also donate cookies. Where our previous problem was not enough concessions we now worried whether we'd have enough people attending to eat all the food we'd have. We soon had a similar problem with our silent auction. We kept calling and emailing managers and our baskets steadily increased. We had stores donating full baskets and hundred-dollar certificates for our auction. We were aiming for about ten auction items, but by the day of the show we had 16 or 17 different items on our auction tables- ranging from $30 to $300 in value. Gateway Bridal and Dreams of Enchantment both generously donated gift certificates worth hundreds of dollars. Harmon's donated a Prom dinner worth $300+, Heartfelt Blossoms donated $80 in dance flowers, Bountiful Music donated $100 in musical supplies, Johnstown LTD donated a $90 shirt... the list was endless of all the things so many people so generously donated to our cause. Everything was coming together so wonderfully it seemed like such a miracle. My mom found people in our ward with a bean bag toss, fish pond, balloon darts, elastic guns, and more... plenty of games to fill our carnival which was to go before the show. The staging plans that I was previously unsure of were given the perfect touch when Michael's donated hundreds of dollars of flowers for the show.. we put them everywhere. I hung them from long strings of yarn for the formal section, stuffed a bunch into buckets and a wooden barrel I found int he bomb shelter, and stuck the rest in a wheel barrel in the foyer. I swear those flowers were like the loaves and the fishes... they just kept multiplying! Each time I thought they should be at least half gone the two boxes Michael's had given us seamed to be overflowing still. While I thought they were a silly donation in the beginning I was so grateful for them in the end after seeing all they did for the staging. It was amazing. In two weeks we'd gone from having like 5 vendors to having so many donations we didn't even know what to do with them all. We had so many prom dress certificates we were stressing about what to do with all of them! And I had so many carnival games from neighbors that I was worried we wouldn't have enough volunteers to run them all. But the day of the show came and we frantically set up everything and found a place for all of our volunteers. It was perfect. We had enough people for every carnival booth and the concessions. We found enough models and entertainment to fill the show, and we even had some people show up! I was a little worried at first that no one was there. It didn't seem like enough people were showing up and I was so worried that we'd only make 7 or $800... but people did come. We had people bid on every one of our auction baskets. The show finally started at 7:30 and I was absolutely thrilled to finally sit down and relax. Of course I could only relax a little while since I was jumping around worrying that things ran smoothly and before long it was intermission and we had to set up for our formals. We were blessed to have tons of giveaways for intermission- coupons from restaurants, and about 15 coupons from the Utaco stand on 5th south... it took forever to give everything away, but I was so grateful since we kind of had a lot to get set up in that time. I was so worried the flowers and lights I had planned to hang from the stage would be tangled when we went to lower them, but they came perfectly. I was worried initially that we wouldn't have enough mason jars or candles to put in them to line the runway, but we had the perfect amount. I was worried the stage would be too bright or too dark, but really it looked perfect. (or at least I thought so :). The show was soon over and I was more than relieved. It had gone so well. (except for just a few small glitches in order of stores, microphones, and formal music it was practically perfect! ;).

Finally it was over and we could clean up from months of planning. And we could count the money we'd made. I was a kind of terrified to see how much we'd earned, so I decided I'd wait until we'd finished cleaning up everything.. But I guess some of the others decided they couldn't wait to find out. Before I knew it they were gathering everyone to announce how much we'd earned. Despite the grin on Albanee and Carter's faces, I braced myself to hear that we'd only made a few hundred dollars... but then they said it... $1464... more than all but one of the previous fashion shows and 500 more than last year! I was ecstatic, but so exhausted I could barely celebrate at all. I later realized that Costco had donated some money directly to Primary Children's in our cause... putting us above $1500 and above any other fashion show FCCLA has ever done! $1500 may not seem like a ton of money, and I'm not sure if it was worth all the hours everyone put into the show. I'm not sure if people would agree that it was worth all of the stress and all of the donations of time, money, and merchandise that businesses and individuals gave. But there is no doubt in my mind that planning the fashion show and all of the concessions, auction, carnival, and booths that went with it were worth the stress. It was worth the time that I put into it. It was worth putting off all four of my online classes that I now only have 2 1/2 weeks to finish and spending a little less time in class and on homework than I otherwise should have. It was worth it all because I learned more from this experience than any of my classes have taught me this year. I learned so much. Although I may have hated it half the time, I loved it twice as much... It was worth the stress and the tears and it was worth all of the frustration. I'm just grateful I'll never have to put up with it again :)