A Really Fun Camping Trip!

We decided to squeeze in one last vacation before school starts in September. Somehow, Summer had come and almost gone, and we never went camping, not even once! Our kids are at perfect ages for camping (meaning everyone sleeps through the night and no wee ones crawling around eating dirt). So, Friday we headed off to Ensign Ranch and met our cousins for our long awaited, much anticipated camping trip! The kids were so excited!

Here's the crazy bunch!

Of course there are all the normal camping things to do that are fun for kids. Catching bugs..

exploring trails and balancing on logs...

and just plain being silly.

We set up a shooting range for the kids to test out their sling shot skills. Even little Emma was able to hit a target once or twice. You should have seen her squeal.
There is a water slide at the ranch that is available for campers to use. Really it's just a giant tarp with a soaker hose at the top, creating the perfect water activity for a hot day. It was a huge hit. I think we were there for 4 hours.


Linsey even caught a fish with her bare hands in one of the little puddles on the tarp. I'm sure that made her dad proud.

There were also horses available for the kids to ride.

Here's Hunter and his cousin Zach.


Here are the girls (Linsey and her cousin Savannah) showing off... "No Hands!"

I think Emma was the most excited to get on her horse!

She also had to show that she could do the "no hands" thing too.

The dads went canoeing out on the lake one afternoon and even came back with a fish. We simply ran out of time to take all the kids out, but we did take a bike ride around the lake.

It was a beautiful place, the weather was perfect, and everyone had fun! We can't wait to go back next year!

I love this time of year! Many of you know that Jared has a green thumb, he truly loves to garden. It's both a hobby and an outlet for him. I joke about how sometimes he comes home from work and walks right past me, out the back door and checks on his garden.

This year he dug up his old garden box and tried a new square box method. Here he is with the kids earlier in the summer.

This is what it looks like now.

We've been getting the most delicious berries (probably my favorite part of summer so far). My kids and their friends eat them all day long.

One of the things I love the most about Jared and his passion for working in the garden is that he involves our children and helps them to see the fun amidst all the hard work. They love helping him and I think they might grow up to have his same love for gardening. Linsey even joined a gardening club at school last year. He gets them started young. I love this picture from a few years ago. They are planting seeds to eventually go out in the garden we had out in our backyard.

Many of you know that I love potatoes and claim them as my favorite food. These home grown potatoes are the absolute best!


The green thumb doesn't stop with the garden either. Jared works hard in our yard and does a great job keeping it nice. He even won an award a few years ago for our neighborhood lawn and garden contest.



I sure appreciate all his hard work. I don't have a green thumb, but I love all the yummy produce we get from our garden and the fresh cut flowers in my kitchen all summer long. This works out really well for me. Thanks Jared!

Summer Fun!

Summer always slips by so fast. School is less than 3 weeks away and we still have tons of fun we still need to pack in. Last weekend was no exception. Realizing that it was our last free weekend and we hadn't been out to visit my parents all summer, we loaded up and headed out for some summer fun swimming in the pool, visiting old high school friends, going to parks, eating yummy corn on the cob, and of course a fishing trip. (My dad claims it's for the grandkids, but I know better.)

Hunter can catch a fish and reel it in all on his own.

We caught plenty of fish that were good sized......but the ones that were the most exciting seemed to be the smaller ones.

Emma really wanted to keep this one and didn't understand why I wouldn't let her put it in her pocket.
This was one of the bigger ones.

I took the kids to a sprinkler park one day. They loved it so much that we stayed for 3 1/2 hours. It wasn't crowded at all so I was able to relax and read a good book. I even ran into an old friend there.

Why do kids love to do this so much? It just looks painful.

This was taken last week. Emma has recently mastered Linsey's OLD bike with training wheels. It's so nice to finally use it again after it's been hanging up in the garage for a few years. She and her little friend spent almost an hour riding in circles in our garage. They laughed and talked all while going in circles and never seemed to get dizzy.

We hope to pack lots more into these last 2 1/2 weeks. Summer's not over yet!

Girls Camp

It's been quite awhile since I've gone to girls camp. Honestly, I haven't been since I was in the program as a youth. I really enjoy being part of the Young Women's program and girls camp was especially fun for me. I love working with these great women. It's amazing how completely different we all are, but somehow it's the perfect balance.


We went to Camp Zarahemla, I knew there were new missionaries serving there, but it was a fun surprise to discover that the new missionaries were from my home town, Kennewick. It just happened to be my Young Women's president from 15 years ago. Here she is on the left. It was a lot of fun to visit with her throughout the week.

It was fun to see the lighter side of some of our church leaders.

These ladies were the cooks. They were a riot all week and we had fun pulling pranks back and forth. Most of the jokes stemmed from a silly night at the beginning of the week where a bunch of us were helping the cooks wrap potatoes in foil. I turned around and noticed that there was a potato with an entire end that wasn't covered. I grabbed it and began to rewrap it, being careful to cover the entire potato in foil. The other ladies teased me about this and told me not to look at the rest of the hundred potatoes too closely. Once quick glance and I realized that most of the potatoes had peek-a-boo holes. I could hardly stand it and had to walk away to keep myself from rewrapping ALL of them. They thought it was so funny and jokes sprang up throughout the rest of the week. All of them including foil.

The girls were amazing and they seemed to be having lots of fun!

It's too bad the water was a little cold. I never tested it for myself, but the girls who did came out looking like this.
We decided to go green this year and asked all of the girls to bring a mess kit or plastic dishes that they could wash and reuse. This saved us from having loads and loads of paper waste. I laughed as some of the girls dollar store plates barely made it through the entire week.

I slept in a motor home and we had a little critter who decided to join us. We watched a chipmunk run up the steps and right through the open door one afternoon. We tried to scare him out but only had a few minutes before we had to race off and teach a class so we ended up leaving the door open a hoped he'd come out on his own. We didn't see much sign of him and assumed he must have left and we were very careful to always keep the door shut after that. Two days later one of the girls saw a chipmunk in the motor home looking out the front windshield at us. The door was shut and he was comfortably sitting on my bed. We were determined to get that little critter out, you should have seen the commotion. Jayne had a cookie sheet she banged as she hollered at him. Christie stuck her camera under seats and in dark corners to take pictures and see where we couldn't see with our eyes. I set up baracades to keep him from running back and forth and we finally watched him run out the door.

There he goes.

One of the silliest nights was skit night. Our stake skit was a lot of fun. Everyone really got into it and the girls had some good laughs. Stephanie was Miss Whimper and Wine, she claims she has seen her kids whine enough that it was easy for her to do, but I've never seen anything like it.

We had some great laughs, lots of fun, and we certainly ate well, but for me, the highlight was watching the girls and seeing how the older ones really run the camp. They are amazing and they are already such great leaders with strong testimonies. Their influence on the younger girls is crucial and their example is so important. I was very impressed with them. There was a great balance of fun and opportunities for the girls to grow spiritually. I can't wait for my daughters to be old enough to be a part of girls camp!

Red Rock

One of our favorite places to go while we are in Waterton is Red Rock Canyon. It's the greatest little hike, and it's especially fun to do on a hot day. You hike up a river bed. It's shallow in many places, but along the way there are rocks that work for sliding or even pools for swimming. There are small waterfalls in places and it's just so pretty. It's somewhat of a challenge deciding which path to take that will keep you from getting completely wet, although some don't seem to mind that at all. The red rock makes the scenery gorgeous. Linsey and Hunter were really into the challenge, Emma found her first pool of water and was content to stay put and throw rocks with Papa .

Here we are.

This is the only picture I had of Jared. He was the only one brave enough to cool off completely.