Young Men's Camp

While Blythe and I were at girl's camp, Brandt was at young men's camp. He went to Camp Williams and did manly stuff, like rappelling off a tall tower, doing calisthenics, working on team building projects, and sweating in the hot sun. They ate well and slept in the barracks, and came home dirty. Brandt said it was fun-ish. I have no pictures. 

Young Women's Camp

Blythe and I spent a couple of days at girl's camp this week at Heber Valley Camp. She went up on the bus on Monday morning and I went up Monday evening after work. We both came home on Wednesday night late. I did a lot of work in the kitchen helping Mary Atkinson who is the camp cook, as well as filling in where I was needed, both in the ward and with the stake. I want to provide real help and work where I am needed. 

Blythe spent her three days trying to avoid most of the activities, although she did do the challenge course, waterfront, and some crafts. She had the opportunity to go on the outback camp, carrying all her gear and food for an overnighter out of the main camp, but she decided she didn't want to do it. I took one only picture during the time I was there, this one of Blythe rainbow decorating the front of a Book of Mormon.

Canoeing 2022

I love our annual canoeing day. This year's trip to Tibble Fork was wonderful as always. We enjoyed the sun, being on the water, and being with each other. I forgot my camera and so have relied on other's photos for documentation. 

Brandt's Ruth joined us this year.

Blake and Brandt are contemplating getting all the way in the water.

They decided not to.

Father's Day

An owl in a tree in the middle of the day

I have been struggling lately and today, Father's Day, I have really, really missed my dad. I needed to be away from the house and thought it would be nice to go up to the cemetery and visit my dad's grave. It was so quiet; I was alone in the cemetery. I sat under the trees next to my dad and an owl flew into the tree above me. An owl! In broad daylight! It was so weird and so amazing. It perched there for a long time, watching me as I watched it. I cried and rested and prayed and came away grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who made our world and all the creatures in it and who knows me, one person in billions of people, and who loves me, and for my earthly father who also loved me.

Chocolate Face

Clearly, Cora is appreciating this cold, chocolate treat.

I love this face!

Grandma Sue Comes Home

 

While I wish this was a post to say that my mom has returned home from her mission, it's not. It is a post to say that my mom has returned home for one week in order to go to the dentist and will then return to Los Angeles to continue her mission. Getting her teeth cleaned in California would cost four times as much as it costs at home. It is cheaper for her to fly home, get her teeth cleaned, then fly back. Crazy. But so nice for us! She'll be here a whole week. 

Twinners!

I went over to Mikayla's today as she and hers were going to run errands with me. Turns out, Cora and I were wearing the same outfit. We didn't even plan it! 

A Haircut

Brandt was in desperate need of a haircut and asked Mikayla if she would be willing to help him out. Mikayla agreed. While I try not to make a big deal out of hair, I was pleased that he looked much better with tidier hair.

Blythe Turns 14

Blythe is fourteen years old today. When you are that age and your birthday is on a Sunday, you kind of have a lame-o birthday. She's going to have an outdoor movie night party on Saturday, so she'll celebrate more, but today, it was church and pavlova. 

Here are fourteen things I like about Blythe.

1. Blythe is remarkably creative.
2. Blythe is a thoughtful gift-giver.
3. Blythe is a good and faithful friend.
4. Blythe is strong and determined in spirit.
5. Blythe is good at keeping her room clean (for the most part).
6. Blythe feels deeply and loves fiercely.
7. Blythe is super good with children, especially her younger cousins.
8. Blythe is funny.
9. Blythe has an infectious laugh.
10. Blythe is accepting. 
11. Blythe is a hard worker when she is engaged in a project.
12. Blythe is a terrific backstage manager. 
13. Blythe cares about family connections.
14. Blythe, in spite of her challenges, remains a happy person at heart.

I thought I had more pictures of the outdoor movie night activity, but it turns out, I don't. I do have pictures of yummy and darling cookies I got from Justine Banks for the party. Here they are.

Look at that popcorn!

Youth Conference at Mutual Dell

For several months, in my capacity as the second counselor in the stake young women's presidency, I have been helping plan a stake youth conference. It has been a somewhat exhausting process as we have also been planning girls camp at the same time. We must not ever do youth conference and girls camp in the same year again. I was asked to head-up the food committee and have had several talks with youth about what they would like to eat. Our big activity was today, an all-day funfest at Mutual Dell, a Church owned camp up American Fork Canyon. We needed to serve lunch and dinner and decided we would do Cafe Rio salads for lunch and J-Dawgs for dinner. I had a good committee, including Kent, Brandt, and Blythe, who helped prepare lots of food last night, and some of the same people who helped prepare and serve today at the event. 

We had a few funny hiccups worth mentioning. For the Cafe Rio salads, we washed and cut up all the lettuce last night. We put it all in white garbage bags so that we could just serve up the lettuce into clamshells and have each person take a box and top it with what they wanted. We were feeding about 150 people, and I thought we had plenty of greenery. 

We got all the foodstuff unloaded this morning, threw meat, rice, and beans into the oven to warm, then began filling clamshells. We got to 75 containers and ran out of greenery. We only had half of what we needed. With an hour and 15 minutes before we had to begin serving lunch, Brandt and I jumped in the car and raced down the canyon to the Macy's grocery store near the mouth of the canyon. We threw bags of spinach, heads of lettuce, and bunches of romaine into the cart, raced to pay, then sped back up the canyon. The food prep team had everything else ready to go, laid out and set, so we quickly washed and chopped lettuce. We had everything ready with about ten minutes to spare. 

Lunch was delicious, everyone had enough to eat, and we only ran out of dressing. We should have made a couple more batches, but it was hard to gauge how much we would need. We only had a bit of chicken and some beans left over, making me feel pretty good about my quantity judging with everything else. As we began to clean up, I opened one of the two refrigerators we were using and discovered six packages of cheese we had forgotten to put out. So irritating! Oh well. I am confident we'll be able to use it for girls camp.

The other hiccup came at dinnertime when we needed to grill 300 hotdogs. We needed to transport all of dinner up the mountain to a pavilion away from the kitchen in the lodge, but I was prepared. I had small foil squares so we could wrap each dog and coolers to place them in to keep them warm. I had plenty of bodies to help grill and wrap, and I thought I was gauging time to start based on the size of the grill (enormous). We fired it up about 40 minutes before we needed to start hauling food up the mountain, but the grill took a really long time to heat up, and it didn't heat up evenly. There were hot spots and cold spots and seemingly no spots, all in the same grill. It was incredibly frustrating. However, Kent and several other men finally got into a rhythm and dogs started getting done. Five of us wrapped dogs and Blythe stacked them in the coolers. It came together and we had plenty of food. So much food, in fact, that we brought home several dozen hotdogs at the end of the night.

Apart from eating, the kids participated in classes, did several activities, and heard a couple really good speakers. They were divided into groups of kids from all over the stake, not just our ward, and they had a good time. Brandt had a better time than Blythe, but she was super helpful with food!

After lunch, we doing food had a break. Ryan and Katey Ward had driven up from Alpine in a Razer and took me and Nora Cassel for a ride up above Tibble Fork. It was loud good fun! With more time after our break, I went in search of the kids. Janie Rasmussen was one of the presenters and I listened to her talk. 

I found Brandt about to participate in an activity that I joined. We were each blindfolded and then walked along a rope that took us to a final destination. It represented out mortal journey back to our Heavenly Father. We were not to talk while doing it, but at the end, we discussed our experiences. The whole experience made me cry and cry. A couple of times along the way, someone gave gentle promptings about a more difficult part of the path, and we were seated by someone who took our arm at the end. Although blindfolded, I could sense that I was next to Brandt. I cried because I am so happy that Brandt is on the covenant path and wants to make good choices. More than anything, I want to be in the Celestial Kingdom with my family, and sitting next to Brandt brought me so much joy. I was very moved by the whole experience.

I was also with Brandt when his group had to get everyone off a sinking ship over shark infested waters. They had to swing on a rope and land on a small platform. Brandt made it over and then caught others as they swung across. 

The concluding activity after our delicious J Dawg dinner, was to have each group perform a skit or a song. Each group had practiced something during one of their rotations, and it was fun to see what they had come up with. Brandt's group did a skit. Blythe didn't participate with her group. 

All in all, it seemed like a great day to me. The kids had a good time, everyone was well fed, and the activities were stellar. While I can report it was success, I can also say we are glad we won't have to do it again next year.

Helping save fellow travelers

Helping prepare dinner for fellow participants

Helping with a skit

Birthday Lunch Date

Cora turns seven today. I can't believe it. She's getting so big. And what do so big girls do on their birthdays? They go to lunch! I took Cora to McDonalds which might not be where other big girls want to eat, but was just right for our Cora. We had a great time, talking about summer and growing up and being older and smarter. I love her!