Loved Girls Camp

Loved being a leader over the 3rd year girls with Erica!

 

Loved being at camp with Linsey and her cute friends!

Loved seeing the silly side of everyone!

 Loved seeing the girls enjoy service.

 How many girls does it take to drill a hole???

That's how many.

But look, they made a bench!

 

More service.  Loved working with these girls!

Loved our camp theme, "In The Carpenter's Hand".   

Lots of neat messages and fun wood crafts.

Loved leaders night.  

The Bishops were good sports to participate in various Olympic events for our entertainment. 

Spiders have never scared me but boy they can make girls squeal.

Loved all the bonding and friendships that happen at girls camp!

Loved all the activities and skits!

Loved that I could be part of the sweet spirit that is at Girls Camp.  It really is amazing!  I'm so impressed with the leadership, talent, and spiritual strength these girls have.  It was such a joy to spend the week with all of them!  Loved being there with my very own sweet girl!

Ragnar 2012

I've always wanted to try a Ragnar.  It's a crazy relay race where you have a team of 12 people, 2 vans, and you run 200 miles.  You start on Friday, run all day and through the night finishing sometime Saturday afternoon.  The way it works is one van (6 runners) all take a turn running and then the second van of runners take over and while they are all running, van 1 is able to rest, shower, eat, and possibly sleep.  (If you call sleeping on a gym floor with hundreds of other runners coming in and out, fire alarms going off, and snoring sleeping then that's what we did - sleep).  It sounds a bit crazy, but it was really, really FUN!

We started out with a family spaghetti feed at the Summer's House.  Steve was our team captain and not only organized everything, but hosted this fun evening.  Our families helped us decorate the van and wished us luck as we pulled away.

 

 

 

Our team name - that's why we all have headbands!!

 We stayed in a hotel that night and got up early Friday morning to send off our first runner. 

Here is everyone from our van.  Mark Casey, Zeke Evans, Stephanie Evans, Steve Summers, Me, and Shannon Lacey.

 We took this picture at the start line to show that the Canadian border is right behind us.  Steve was off running.

 Here I am passing off to Stephanie.  

You wear a slap bracelet that you pass to your runner at the exchanges.

Once van 2 took over, we got some lunch and went to a designated High School where we could shower and get a little rest.  None of us had slept great the night before, and we had gotten up early that morning to run in the rain.  It felt so nice to be warm and dry.

Sleeping was another story.  I referred to this as our non-nap.

I tossed and turned and once I finally fell asleep, the fire alarm went off.  It was soo loud!!  We all had to evacuate and everything.  There was no fire, something about construction that had triggered it.

Then, there was all sorts of clanging and banging while they tried to change some filter to prevent it from happening again.
Awesome.
Good thing it was at the beginning of our race and we could just laugh about it.
I actually slept much better in similar circumstances (minus the fire alarm and clanging and banging) later that evening.

When you have a runner out, you drive ahead and park so you can cheer them on, give them water, or in this case dance on the van to get them pumped up!

 

Mark was running and we could see him coming.  He had two runners slightly ahead of him, but we could see that he was gaining on them and would be passing them right about the time he approached our van.  We started blaring our music and it couldn't have been more perfect.  Just as he was running by, he passed both of the runners to the words    "Dun.. Dun.. Dun.. another one bites the dust!"

One of my favorite parts of the whole race!

We had a late dinner while van 2 was running, and then chose sleep over a shower.

 

It was crazy to wake up and see 3 gyms and the hallways full of sleeping runners everywhere, even under the drinking fountain.

 I've never before ran in complete darkness.  Kinda cool.

Our van finished quite early in the day and had some time to hang out at the finish line while we waited for van 2.

 Shannon, me, Stephanie

 Here we all are.. van 1 and van 2

Totally crazy!

Totally fun!

I'd totally do it again!

Road Trip

This was probably the best road trip ever.

 Maybe it's because we rented an RV.... super cool!

 

 

 

 Plenty of space, all the comforts of home, and no seat belts, except for the captain and co-captain.

 

 
We met up with the cousins on Friday and headed off to Canada.  The only thing cooler than traveling in an RV is doing it all with the Butler cousins.

 

Everyone was happy.  The back bedroom was nice for kids to watch movies in or do little projects, or if they were in Uncle Chris's RV they would play the Wii (that's where the boys spent most of their time).

 

The kids thought it was really fun to surf while we were driving down the highway.

Friday night we stayed at a fun RV park right outside Glacier National Park.  There was an ice cream shop and a heated pool.  Perfect!

Saturday morning we headed to Raymond Canada where we were planning to spend a few days with Grandpa Bill.  We did some fishing at Corner Lake and played in the water.

 

 

 

 

We parked the RV's and used Grandpa Bill's truck as our mode of transportation.  Only in a small town can you get away with this.

 

 We brought our bikes too.  

The boys had a lot of fun riding through mud puddles.

  Zach and Hunter

 

 They didn't mind getting hosed down afterwards either.  Crazy boys.

Grandpa Bill has a really cool backyard.  We took a few pictures before church on Sunday.

 

 

 

Uncle Mike and Aunt Emma arrived at Grandpa Bill's house the same time we did.  It was fun to hang out with their cute family too.  Mike was sweet to take all the kids on a horse ride.

 Austin

 Linsey

 Baby Kate wasn't a huge fan... still cute though.

 Hunter and Zach

 Grandpa Bill and Emma

Monday was the official celebration for Canada Day!  We started off by going to the Raymond parade.

The kids especially loved this float, it's a plumbing company and if you look closely there is a kid on top of the van sitting on a toilet.  He's throwing out tootsie rolls that he is getting from inside the toilet.  Someone from the back is tossing out rolls of toilet paper. 

 

 

 The kids ended up with quite a stash of candy too.

 

 That afternoon we went to the Raymond Stampede.  It's the only rodeo we ever go to and we love it!

 

 

 

 Only in Canada.. ice cream and a slurpee - so Yummy!

 

 one for everyone.

 Here we are waiting for fireworks to start. 

 still waiting...

There was a full moon so it never really got pitch black.  They finally realized it wasn't going to get any darker and started the fireworks at 11:00.  It made for a late night but that was just the beginning of many, many late nights.

Tuesday was Linsey's birthday.  We had donuts for breakfast and had a fun celebrating Linsey's birthday.  See this post for pictures and more about that.

We headed up to Waterton National Park, did a fun hike called Bears Hump, and had a little party at our campground.

It was pretty windy up top, but the view is amazing.  

Here is our whole group.

 

Cameron Falls

Wednesday we did one of our favorite hikes at Red Rock, and then hiked to Crandell Lake.  It was a full day of fun. 

  

It's so fun to hike up the river bed.  The water is ice cold, but it never stops the kids (and Jared) from getting wet.

 

 I believe this is Hunter, but it could also have been Zach, or Jared.  All three of them went under.  Crazy!

 Even Austin got in on the fun.

 

 

Here are all the kids, tired and cold -warming up on the hot street.

 

 

Chris and Tally have 2 puppies that came along with us on the trip.  Emma was in heaven.  Here she is at Crandell Lake petting both of them at once. 

 I just thought this was a cute picture... sorry Austin.

 

We had promised the kids we would get ice cream so it made perfect sense to do that while we were out doing some souvenir shopping that evening.  Who cares that we hadn't had dinner yet, we were on vacation!  We got around to grilling up steak on a stick at about 10:30.  The kids joked that we had ice cream for dinner and steak for dessert.

 

 

Thursday was our last day in Waterton.  We headed over to Cameron Lake.  It's so beautiful.

 

The kids found snow and I think this is the first time they have ever built a snowman while playing at the beach in their swimsuits.

 

 

  

 

I found these hats for the boys, they were perfect!  It has a picture of a boy riding a bike and flicking mud from the tires -it says Get Dirty. 

 

 We saw a couple of bear this year.  We saw this one on our way out.

We drove 5 hours to Banf that night.  We thought it was crazy having dinner at 10:30 the night before but we were really shocked to notice that by the time we were sitting to eat that night, it was 11:15.  Man, we played hard.

Friday we woke up and took a bike ride into Banf.  The Canadian Rockies are so beautiful!

 

 

 

 Lake Louise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much fun...
So many memories...

 

And a really fun way to travel. 

My favorite quote of the trip was this:

"The RV is so cool dad, it's like we just do fun stuff like we would be doing at home, and then suddenly we are in a new place!"

-Hunter